


The Bones are Good, Honey

by Mari_Knickerbocker, PrettierAndYounger



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Teen Wolf (TV) Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anonymous Pen-Pals, Canon Divergent, F/M, Found Family, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Interfering Third Parties, M/M, Magical Realism, Mistaken Identity, Modern Steve Rogers, Mpreg, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Werewolves, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, a/b/o dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:21:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 53,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27748183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mari_Knickerbocker/pseuds/Mari_Knickerbocker, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettierAndYounger/pseuds/PrettierAndYounger
Summary: Once, the most prominent packs in NYC, Washington DC, and LA had been family; and they're trying to become so again. Of course, family doesn't come without a few bumps along the way, especially when you're re-establishing ties by celebrating the death of one packs' villainous alpha and the subsequent fallout that had practically destroyed the surviving pack members. While everyone else is busy celebrating James Barnes' successful coup, he's busy eyeing a particular beefy blond from Brooklyn. A spitfire with blue eyes.
Relationships: Carol Danvers/Maria Rambeau, Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Others(mentioned), James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 78
Collections: Not Another Stucky Big Bang 2020





	1. Building the Foundation

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! & welcome to our (N)ASBB!! I'm so happy for you to see the wonderful art from PrettierAndYounger and read the fic I've written. This bang was a bright spot for me during *waves hands* all the nonsense 2020 had to offer, and I hope y'all will enjoy the fruits of our labors.
> 
> I'd like to thank PrettierAndYounger for taking a chance on my fic and the wonderful artwork she created for it. I'd also like to thank the (N)ASBB mods for how they ran this event - it's been one of my best experiences to date! Lastly, I'd like to thank chilibabie for agreeing to beta read this sometimes rambling beast. If there are still any errors then the fault lies with me.
> 
> Please read and enjoy! Or at least check out the art!!

[](https://imgur.com/dG7tIfI)

**Prologue: Building the Foundation**

**🐺~🐺~🐾~🐺~🐺**

There have always been wolves in Brooklyn.

There wasn’t a formal pack, however, until Abraham Erskine. Now, how that came to be is a rather convoluted story, but one that deserves to be told.

Until 1935, Abraham lived peacefully in Augsburg. Although ‘peacefully’ was a relative term, given everything currently happening in Germany, with Hitler quickly rising to power. As a scientist, Abraham was working on exploring the limits of human strength and resilience and comparing it to the so-called ‘super’ strength of a werewolf. For him, humanity’s strength seemed endless. This had started as just a simple case of curiosity and remained merely a theoretical, mathematical problem, nothing experimental about it. But as it was bound to happen, even in the scientific community, gossipers got a hold of his theories, and the nature of his work was distorted and blown out of proportion. That was what had brought him to the attention of the new Führer. Hilter wanted to know all about this serum Erskine supposedly developed that was said to enhance human strength and abilities to superhuman levels.

Recognizing the writing on the wall for what it was, he tried to escape Germany with his pack to Switzerland, but unfortunately, he had waited too long.

He was captured and his pack, his beloved family, was slaughtered by Johann Schmidt’s Hydra’s foot soldiers, all to force him to complete a serum that did not exist. A serum that Hitler, and Zola, Schmidt’s pet weasel, were convinced was real.

Unfortunately, the only way Abraham knew how to turn another individual into a ‘superhuman’ was to bestow upon them the gift of the Bite. As an Alpha werewolf, he could turn anyone he wanted to into a werewolf, but he preferred to choose those who would be worthy of such a gift. An individual who wouldn’t be inclined to abuse it. That had always been his policy, and he wasn’t inclined to change it any time soon.

Schmidt believed in something more than just science, he believed, wholeheartedly, in the supernatural and soon recognized Erskine for what he really was. Mostly, however, Schmidt believed that he could dominate and control the supernatural world. Bend it to his will and compel it to do his bidding. And he believed that the best way to go about molding both the supernatural and the natural world in his image was to have a foothold in both.

He wanted, no _demanded_ , the Bite from Erskine. Against his will and better judgment, Abraham found himself giving in to Schmidt’s demands. He knew it would only end in disaster the moment he realized that Schmidt worked with the Nazi’s, but did not strictly follow their ideologies, or rather had taken their ideologies to an extreme beyond even what Hitler could dream of. The experimentation being done by Mengele and his ilk were horrific, there was no denying this, but whereas they wanted to remake the world in the image of the Ayran race, Schmidt would only be satisfied with the universe. To that end, he developed weapons that were capable of disintegrating anyone and anything they were aimed at. Schmidt wanted the universe remade in his image and only his image of what the universe should be.

  
_“We know that the superior man will not be born, Professor Erskine. He will not be a member of any_ “master race.” _He will be a race unto himself. …”_  


Johann wanted to become a werewolf not only for the power he believed he would come to possess, but he misread the lore and assumed that an alpha human once bitten automatically possessed the Alpha spark, the power that made a werewolf capable of creating new werewolves and sustaining a pack. Furthermore, Schmidt had heard of an ancient artifact that only a superior man could attain and was convinced that, to become that superior man, he had to receive the Bite. Against his better judgment and his nature, Abraham found himself conceding to Johann’s demands. Not that he was given much of a choice in the matter – still he had wanted to think he had a firmer moral backbone than that, but a broken man was a broken man, and the senseless deaths of his beloved mate and the rest of his cherished pack members had thoroughly broken him.

As he feared it would, the Bite revealed Schmidt for the monster that he truly was.

Actually… it was worse than Erskine had feared. For unbeknownst to him at the time Schmidt’s pet Zola had taken those theoretical notes and created a serum, which Schmidt had injected himself with before receiving the Bite. And a true monster did he become.

**🐺~🐺~🐾~🐺~🐺**

…Afterwards, when it was too late to take back Erskine’s part in creating such a loathsome creature, Agent Carter came to rescue him. He recognized something in her that he used to know within himself, here was a person whose secondary gender was that of a beta yet she was an Alpha werewolf, and Abraham had no issues with following her orders. He could tell that that took Carter aback but didn’t care why. Almost in a daze Erskine collected his notes and demurely went along with the rescue plan, everything alpha about him utterly cowered.

_Honey, you're familiar like my mirror years ago  
Idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on its sword  
Innocence died screaming, honey, ask me I should know…_

**🐺~🐺~🐾~🐺~🐺**

_There's too many men  
Too many people  
Making too many problems  
And not much love to go round  
Just tell me why  
This is a land of confusion._

He should have paid better attention.

In the end, the Americans' ambitions were no better than Hydra’s had been. Once again, Abraham found himself put into the impossible position of being “asked” to turn others into ‘wolves for the sake of the war effort by those who believed werewolves could just be leashed, like the family dog.

That was the problem with those who only dabbled in the supernatural and considered themselves experts. Especially when it came to werewolves. There was this assumption that the wolf was just some dumb creature that could be controlled – that it was separate from one’s humanity when actually, the wolf was simply the rawest and purest reflection of an individual’s soul. To put it in simpler terms, the wolf amplifies everything that is inside of a man so that good becomes great, and bad becomes worse. As he’d just been pressured, no, the correct term was forced, into bestowing the Bite upon someone unworthy of receiving such a gift to dastardly results; Abraham could not afford to make the same mistake again. Not even at the request of his so-called “rescuers”. Rescuers who wanted him to provide them with an entire wolfpack to help fight their ‘moral’ enemies. Erskine had already heard the exact same argument from the other side of the fence and the grass was not looking any greener from where he was standing right now.

Again, Erskine only found himself agreeing to the ‘request’ (which was no request at all) if he could have the final say in the candidates chosen for this new secret project. He was tempted to turn to Agent Carter and threaten to reveal that she was a werewolf to her superiors if his demand was not met. Certainly, the Allies could’ve used their own resources if they were so desperate to build a battalion of wolves to do their bidding! Why bother going through this charade of rescuing him and demanding this non-favor of him? 

It all boiled down to the serum once again. That silly little fable in the scientific community of a superhuman serum he was meant to have developed. A serum that did not exist beyond theory. The Americans, however, particularly their Military Brass, believed in the serum, and therefore it existed.

The project was given to the Scientific Strategic Reserve (the S.S.R.), the Allies answer to Hydra; and the man in charge of Project Rebirth, Colonel Chester Phillips, was one of those rare individuals who possessed a personal insight into the supernatural world without being a direct member of it. Furthermore, he had the even rarer knack of allowing others to be themselves and trusting in their judgments as soon as he’d recognized their value. The tricky part was getting him to recognize said value.

“Dr. Erskine,” Colonel Phillips had greeted him, “quite frankly I feel like this has the potential to blow up in our faces like a faulty grenade, but the United States Army insists on going forward with this foolhardy plan. Therefore, it falls to us to give them the spectacle that they are looking for along with a super-soldier.”

In that vein an elaborate stage performance was arranged, all to hide the fact that what Erskine would really be doing was turning their promising young soldiers into werewolves, not superhumans. Well, at least, not through using a super-soldier serum. Abraham chafed at the whole ridiculous charade. Everything now had to be couched in terms of scientific experimentation and exploration because that was far more palpable than the existence of a supernatural creature. Yes, far more believable to think that he was able to develop some kind of super-soldier serum than to just accept the fact that, as the Bard so eloquently put it: _“there are more things in heaven and Earth... than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”_ Humans, however, had a particular blind spot when it came to looking beyond the end of their noses, especially when it came to things outside of their predetermined comfort zones. They were very much creatures of habit, and there was nothing like a military man to exude habit. (And nothing like a werewolf to buck the so-called acceptable conventions).

Agent Carter was again brought on board to help with Project Rebirth and the selection of their first candidate. Erskine wasn’t surprised to discover that most of her colleagues at the S.S.R. didn’t realize she was a werewolf simply because their sexism wouldn’t allow them to believe that a woman could be such a fearsome creature. They barely believed that Ms. Carter was as an accomplished spy as she clearly was; despite the evidence to the contrary in front of them. To be honest with himself, Abraham was still tempted to out Ms. Carter to her colleagues for what she really was, but refrained from doing so for several reasons. One, because it wasn’t in his nature to act on such petty feelings, and two, because he understood, and respected (now more than ever), the need for secrecy.

Secrecy kept them safe. Kept them alive.

Therefore, he would give Ms. Carter the common courtesy of keeping her secret even though his own had been bandied about for all the world’s intelligence agencies to trace their grubby little paws over. It made him want to growl, howl, and pace like some sort of caged animal, then turn around and bite someone. Which was precisely what they wanted from him and knowing that only served to set him more on edge. Abraham managed to keep ahold of his civility by reminding himself that not only did he serve as a representative of what a werewolf was for these wide-eyed Americans, but he also served as a representative of the German people. It was easy for the rest of the world to forget that the first country the Nazis invaded was their own. Abraham had to show them that not only was he not some mindless beast, but he wasn’t a goose-stepping clown either. It was a rather stressful tightrope to walk and one he found harrowing to manage. But manage it he did. 

When Abraham was introduced to the engineer who would be helping him to sell the show of this charade, he had to bite his cheek to keep from laughing. Howard Stark, a man he’d met briefly once before, was yet another alpha werewolf. The odds of there being three wolves working on the same secret military project, and all three of them being alpha’s, were astronomical. Just how weak were human noses that they did not notice the difference? Did they really have the right to go strutting about claiming to be at the top of the food chain and daring to call themselves alphas, betas, or even omegas, when they couldn’t even sense the predators within their midst? What utter foolishness!

**🐺~🐺~🐾~🐺~🐺**

_Ooh superman where are you now  
When everything's gone wrong somehow  
The men of steel, the men of power  
Are losing control by the hour._

The approved candidates were all a bunch of lug heads, to put it succinctly. Of course, the powers that be had selected nothing but alphas for the project. How quaint of them to believe in the antiquated notion that only alphas would be worthy of enhancement. Fools the lot of them. Nine times out of ten when a born alpha found themselves inheriting the alpha powers of a werewolf it was too much power for them to control and it often got away from them. The few instances of infighting amongst werewolf packs were often started by such individuals. Traditionally, pack Alphas chose to transfer the alpha spark to born betas with the understanding that they were the more level-headed option – particularly if a pack was made up of bitten wolves rather than born wolves. There were, of course, exceptions to every rule.

Abraham managed to find one such exception in James Barnes.

He observed the young man carefully and quickly recognized in him the traits he would’ve been proud to see in any aspiring pack alpha. James was inclined to observe his fellow recruits and keep his head down but that didn’t mean he kept himself entirely apart from them either. He was often found lingering on the obstacle course, to the detriment of his own qualifying times, to make sure everyone made it through without incident. Barnes had already risen to the rank of Sergeant and clearly took the responsibilities associated with that rank seriously, he cared for his fellow cadets even if they didn’t care for him in return. But that didn’t prevent him from listening to Agent Carter’s commands and respecting her as a figure of authority.

Barnes was so unlike what Erskine had come to expect from an alpha that he found himself wondering what it was about the younger man that made him so self-aware. Usually, a strong man, who has known power all his life lost respect for that power and the influence it had on others. Whereas a weaker man understood the value of strength and more importantly knew the value of compassion. Some circumstances of Sergeant Barnes' life encouraged him towards compassion. A trait that was often overlooked in – if not considered outright undesirable – in a man, particularly an alpha.

Abraham didn’t care to pry into the reasons why, but simple observance provided him with plenty of insight. Barnes was known to speak about a best friend, a scrapper of an omega, who had wanted to join the army but couldn't due to not just his status but a long list of health issues. Not that that had stopped him from trying to do his part, according to Barnes. Then when Hodge – a particularly dimwitted neanderthal, and the brass’ top pick for Project Rebirth – started crowing about how he couldn’t wait to get over there and kill himself some dirty krauts Barnes took exception to the phasing. In fact, he appeared to take exception to Hodge’s entire attitude and was quick to give him a tongue lashing of a lifetime. Dressing him down to nothing but his metaphorical shorts. If Hodge had a tail it would have been firmly tucked between his legs out of shame from disappointing someone higher up in the pack hierarchy than him.

Where Barnes’ true metal showed, however, was the incident with the dummy grenade. Phillips didn’t care for Abraham’s preference for Barnes over Hodge. According to the Colonel, Hodge was the perfect candidate; not only did he pass every test given to him, but he was big, fast, and obeyed orders without questioning them. A perfect soldier. A perfect bully is more like it. Yet, as Phillips liked to point out wars were won with guts, not niceness. He tried to prove that by tossing a dummy grenade in the midst of the recruits believing that his choice would take care of it – Abraham could have smelt his certainty even if he wasn’t standing right next to Phillips – only to have his favorite recruit runaway while Barnes charged forward towards the grenade.

“Looks like you picked the best alpha for the job, Doc.”

**🐺~🐺~🐾~🐺~🐺**

Phillips initially told Erskine that Howard’s role was to make the chosen subject’s transformation into a werewolf appear less like the result of something supernatural, but more of one that was scientific yet unquantifiable. Granted, at the very edge of what modern science could achieve, but still believable, something that could be scooped up and easily stored away in a jar, that was a measurable change. But Stark let slip that he was going to try and study the change itself. 

That, more than anything else about the giant hoax that Project Rebirth was meant to be, caused Abraham to rethink his involvement. If he had a choice in the matter he would refuse to go through with the whole damn thing. But his agency had been stripped from him in the guise of a rescue, just like it had been stripped from him in the smokescreen of scientific progress. Disenfranchised he watched as Stark assembled a metal coffin meant to both contain Barnes as he went through the transformation and measure the progress of the changes in his body caused by the Bite. 

It went against everything he’d ever been told as a born werewolf to allow someone to closely observe the process of the change from human into a werewolf, even a fellow Alpha ‘wolf. One of the first things Abraham had ever learned sitting at his own Alpha’s knee was to never do anything that gave away the secret of the supernatural. He’s lived by that rule his entire life, at great personal cost, yet here he was forced into breaking it by a fellow werewolf who was going to happily hand over all of their secrets to those who would weaponize them against supernatural creatures and humans alike, without discrimination. Abraham wanted to grab Stark by the scruff of his neck, dig his claws in, and shake the pup until he saw sense. He didn’t dare do it, however. Simply because he couldn’t afford to get into a spat with a foolish young alpha and risk losing whatever hierarchical standing he had here as the oldest alpha or risk exposing Stark’s true nature. For unlike Howard, Erskine respected the privacy of his fellow werewolves.

Events progressed despite his misgivings, as they often did, and before long it was the night before the “procedure”. All the other potential candidates had been sent packing off to the front - no able-bodied young man left behind - and only Barnes was left at Camp Lehigh with the scientists. Abraham spent the majority of his evening pouring over the notes Agent Carter had pilfered from Schmidt’s pet Zola. To his utmost dismay, he realized that Zola had stumbled across an actual formula for a super-soldier serum that could potentially work. Fighting the urge to shift and howl his frustrations to the night sky, he grabbed up a bottle of wolfsbane spiked schnapps he still had from Augsburg and went for a walk. If ever there was a time for him to just drink until he forgot then now was it.

His wandering feet took him out towards the nearly empty barracks without any conscious input from him. As he neared the lonely building with its solitary heartbeat he spotted a figure standing along the side of the building half-hidden in the shadows cast by lighted windows. The red tip flare of a cigarette briefly lit the bottom half of a face, illuminating the smoker’s five o’clock shadow and a cupid bow mouth.

“Hiya Doc,” Barnes greeted him as he got closer, speaking around the cigarette in his mouth. His voice had slipped into a thicker Brooklyn accent than Abraham was used to hearing. “Nice to know I’m not the only one nervous about tomorrow.”

“Who says that I am nervous?”

“Just a hunch,” Barnes replies shrugging noncommittally. “I’d be nervous myself if I were about to turn some poor schmuck into a werewolf.”

“Ah, so Colonel Phillips has told you the truth of the project then.”

“More like he left it to Agent Carter to tell me while he stood in the background looking stern.”

Abraham snorted at that. Not that he doubted Carter’s ability to tell James the truth of their project and convince him that it wasn’t a hoax; any more than the idea of a super-soldier serum was. It just struck him as funny that Phillips would remain in the background and practice his disappointed father's face while leaving the heavy lifting to Carter. Silence fell between them after that and Abraham allowed it. Barnes seemed loathed to break it too, taking a few drags of his cigarette making the cherry glow brightly before exhaling a puff of smoke. 

“Can I axeya something?” Barnes spoke around the remaining nub of his cigarette, causing him to mumble his words. That, with the added bit of Brooklyn in his speech, made it difficult for Abraham to immediately parse what it was the younger man had said.

“Of course you may, but only one thing?” he answered. In response to that Barnes kicked away from where he was leaning against the building and ambled off towards a nearby picnic table. After a beat Abraham went to join him, setting down his bottle of schnapps and the two glasses he managed to grab before leaving his barracks on reflex alone. 

“Why me?”

“I suppose that’s the only question that matters.”

**🐺~🐺~🐾~🐺~🐺**

_We're in the home stretch of the high times  
We took a hard left  
But we're alright  
Yeah, life sure can try to put love through it, but  
We built this right, so nothing's ever gonna move it_

He hadn’t expected to live beyond the destruction of his first pack. Just like wolves, werewolves mated for life and the death of his mate, along with the death of his children and pack mates, should have quite literally been the death of him. Yet Erskine had survived long enough to be rescued by Agent Carter, to meet Howard Stark, and to turn James Barnes into a werewolf with an Alpha spark that burned like its own personal sun, so strong was it.

When the Hydra spy revealed himself to steal Erskine’s version of the serum, he did not expect to survive the encounter. Luckily for him, depending on your point of view, he was shot in the heart at point-blank range with your average, run of the mill bullets, not silver, blessed steel, or wolfsbane. Any of which would have done near irrevocable damage if not outright killed him. With a regular old gunpowder and metal jacket bullet, however, Abraham just had to play dead long enough for Howard to get him up on a gurney and tuck him away in a side room. Thanks to that bullet, and Howard supplying him with a privates’ uniform, Abraham was able to walk away from the SSR and their plotting for the War Machine.

His only regret was that he couldn’t take Barnes with him. A regret that he’d have to live with when he heard how Barnes died in the Alps during a mission acquiring the intelligence that eventually led to the end of Schmidt and Hydra.

Just because he was able to walk away from the SSR in 1943 didn’t mean he was free from Stark, however, and eventually whatever Stark knew Carter learned off. When they started SHIELD they brought Erskine in as a consultant. It was work that he tried to keep his distance from as much as possible.

Abraham’s new pack was made up of the lonely, the misfits, those who felt adrift, human, werewolf, it didn’t matter to him. He settles down in Brooklyn. Partially because it is the only part of the city he feels even remotely comfortable with and partly because it allows him to remain close to the memory of Barnes. That might seem foolish, even silly really when viewed from an outside perspective. Holding onto the memory of a man that he’d barely known, but it gave Abraham a great deal of solace to do so.

Although most would probably object to him settling down in the exact same borough of the city as the SSR’s secret offices. But, after taking some time to think things over, there was no denying that it made the most sense. Who would think to go looking for a dead man living just two measly blocks/neighborhoods away from where he had been gunned down and his life’s work blown up?

No one. Especially not any pragmatic military man worth his salt. Which was why doing so was perfect. Abraham could hide in plain sight and not be bothered.

Howard Stark, on the other hand, was a different kettle of fish altogether. But then again he was preoccupied with distancing himself from his rather humble origins while Abraham had nothing against a little humility and that kept them from interacting too much for suspicion to develop. Just, not enough, if Abraham was being honest.

As far as the general public was concerned he was just another transplant from Europe. A casualty of the War forced to immigrate to New York and start a new life in America like so many before him. If only it could’ve been as simple as that in the supernatural community. Fortunately, that was one aspect where knowing Stark and being unable to escape his brand of over-familiarity came in handy. As a foreign werewolf, an Alpha to boot, on US soil Abraham had to petition the Supernatural Council for the right to form a pack. Particularly since he wanted to do so within the confines of New York City. He’d lucked out because there wasn’t a bloodline that could currently lay a claim to Brooklyn and with Howard’s support – his status as a war hero, associated both with the Manhattan Project and Sergeant Barnes’ Howling Commandos, went a long way towards impressing people – Abraham was gifted Brooklyn as his new pack lands with very little fuss.

For several years it’s just Abraham on his own. Rattling about in a decent-sized brownstone that had been divided up into apartments at some point in its past. A building that he was only able to afford thanks to Howard playing fast and loose with banking laws. Somehow, he’d convinced the Army, the SSR in particular, to pay out an exuberant consulting fee to the late Dr. Erskine as well as a gratuity fee to the late doctor’s estate for the next fifty years, seeing as they were ultimately responsible for his untimely death and it was for the Army that Erskine gave his greatest contribution to both mankind and science. Now Abraham wasn’t one to cast dispersions on his fellow man but he had to wonder if it was due to Howard’s over-familiarity with certain rumrunners that led him to think of attempting to scam the US Army in the first place. Either way, it worked out in the end. Although Abraham had briefly considered refusing the money. He wasn’t sure how comfortable he felt using stolen resources, but then Howard could be very persuasive. He pointed out, rightly so, that if properly invested that money could generate a significant nest egg for a growing pack. Afterall, why start from scratch if he didn’t have too.

What helped Abraham make up his mind was the fact that Howard’s man Jarvis would oversee the money going in and out of the estate fund and also the measures Stark took to ensure that Barnes would be taken care of. Stark made sure that Barnes was listed as MIA, instead of KIA, which in turn ensured that his pay continued to accrue long after his death. That kind of optimism and generosity, so at odds with the persona that Howard tried to put forth, convinced Abraham to accept the money. What wasn’t used to purchase his future pack home in Bed-Stuy he invested with Mr. Jarvis’ help, aside from a small monthly stipend that he needed for a modest living. Aside from Stark popping by randomly to check-in, Abraham mostly kept to himself. Then in the mid-fifties Barnes’ Commandos found their way to him.

His identity and location were both meant to be kept secret – what was the bloody point of playing dead if everyone knew you were alive? – but Howard had always been one to boast and Abraham had never doubted the intelligence of the men Barnes had chosen to surround himself with during wartime. Even though the various radio plays and comic strips would have one believe that Barnes was the soul brains of the outfit. That just wasn’t the case. Furthermore, it was a disservice to not just Barnes, but his chosen packmates, to suggest so.

It was Gabe Jones, Barnes’ second in command, who first appeared looking forlorn and exhausted on Abraham’s front stoop. But Jones was just the advance scout, at some unknown signal to Erskine the rest were given an all-clear to join Jones. All Abraham knew was that he went out one morning to collect the milk only to discover the rest of the Howling Commandos standing there on his stoop, hats in hand, wondering if he might be able to spare an apartment to rent. Face to face with Gabe Jones, Timothy “Dum Dum” Dugan, Jim Morita, James Montgomery Falsworth, Junior Juniper, and Jacques Dernier all gathered before him, Abraham couldn’t find it within him to turn them away. These men, a mixture of both born and bitten werewolves and humans, are the men that were found and chosen by Barnes when they were all captured in that Austrian Hydra Weapons facility. Captured, tortured, and made to manufacture the very weapons they had seen gun down their fellow soldiers then left for dead by the very leaders who were meant to have their backs. It’s no wonder that they formed such a tight-knit pack around Barnes who organized them and galvanized them into an escape attempt – the fact that it just so happened to coincide with Agent Carter’s raid for information was mere coincidence.

A coincidence that allowed Carter to tangentially join their ranks. And as her own missions for the SSR lined up more and more with the Howling Commandos missions to destroy Hydra, she found herself becoming an auxiliary member to Barnes pack. A status that lasted beyond wartime footing. Because of this, Carter would occasionally stop in around her work at the SSR offices hidden at the New York city phone company. Dum Dum and a few of the others were still stuck running missions for both the Army and the SSR which would take them away for months at a time. There were stretches of communication blackout that left Erskine wondering who, if anyone, would return to the set of apartments they had made their own. Yet somehow, despite all of that, the Howling Commandos and Carter became Abraham’s new pack.

When Stark moves out to Hollywood and decides that along with making movies and building the “city of tomorrow, today”, he wanted to take on the job of policing the world, take over the SSR, Howard wanted Peggy at his side. Somehow Howard’s requesting Carter’s help to reconstruct the Strategic Scientific Reserve as the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistic Division; translated into a pattern of members from Abraham’s pack working for S.H.I.E.L.D. It’s a pattern that lasts for decades.

Abraham Erskine becomes known for taking in those who feel as if they have nowhere else to go. In turn pack, Erskine gains a reputation as being for the strays. Where some werewolves might consider that a smear upon their reputation, to be related to a pack of strays, those within Erskine’s pack would never see it that way. While others in the supernatural community might snarl at the supposed insult those who Abraham welcomed into his family never saw it that way. Never felt that way about their pack. They were proud of the fact that Abraham took in the lonely, the misfits, those who felt adrift and lost in the world, human or werewolf, regardless of their circumstances, and never judged them. He gave them a sense of home again and never once made them feel as if they had to give up who they were to keep that home. Who wouldn’t be proud to belong to such a family?

**🐺~🐺~🐾~🐺~🐺**

_When the bones are good, the rest don't matter  
Yeah, the paint could peel, the glass could shatter  
Let it rain 'cause you and I remain the same_

Then there was the widowed mother and her sickly young son, who Abraham allowed to live in an apartment in his brownstone – something that was unheard of for anyone who was not pack – and visibly doted on. Sarah Rogers was a petite woman with birdlike bones (that made anyone who saw her think of the Faire Folk her homeland was so well known for) and strawberry blonde hair that only hinted at the stubborn temper she could (and would) bring to bear to solve any and every problem that dared to stand in her way. At five foot, four inches, she was just a wisp of a thing but her mere presence turned her into a giant in the mind’s eye of all who knew her.

It wasn’t hard to believe that she’d have the wherewithal to emigrate from Ireland by herself while still in her first trimester and battling the more than occasionally ruthless bout of morning sickness. Of course, immigration in the 1980s was easier than it had been in the 1920s, a plane ride across the Atlantic as opposed to a boat certainly took some sting out of the journey. Nor was it difficult to picture Sarah working diligently away as a waitress at a known cop shop dinner as her pregnancy progressed, just so she could maintain a dubious roof over her head down in Flatbush. 

And she continued to do just that once her son Steve was born, relying on the help of a couple of friendly neighbors to watch him during the occasional night shift, but frequently taking him to work with her. He was small enough that she could easily line an unused apple crate with clean dish rags for padding and place him in it swaddled up in a receiving blanket or two. Sarah could then leave him tucked into it behind the counter and out of the way. Of course, that only worked until Steve became mobile, then she had to be a bit more creative. And somehow between finding a sitter and taking Steve to work with her, Sarah managed to provide a life for her son. But Sarah wanted more for her son than what she was currently able to give him. With that in mind, she resumed her nursing studies, having to start from scratch since she left halfway through the program she had attended in Ireland. (It probably would have been easier if Sarah made the effort to transfer her credits, but she didn’t want an excessive paper trail leading to her new life). Therefore, she soon worked night school into her weekly routine.

That’s how Abraham discovered them in the summer of 1990.

On some random Thursday in June, on a whim, he’d decided he wanted to try the coffee at the Hamilton Ave Diner. Sarah was still working there, picking up extra shifts around her scheduled 4 days on 3 days off at University Hospital of Brooklyn as a third-year nurse. Sitting alone peacefully in a booth closest to the counter, and therefore the kitchen, was a young boy of about four or five, carefully doodling away in a battered notebook with all the focused determination of someone uncovering the mysteries of the universe. 

Erskine wasn’t to know all those details, however, all he knew was that the boy’s keen focus caught his immediate attention. So much so that Abraham decided to sit in the booth facing him with his back towards the entrance, something he rarely did. On principle, Abraham did not like not having a direct line of sight on all the exits in a place. Especially somewhere new to him. It was partially due to his alpha instincts and partially life lessons learned the painful way. He wouldn’t dwell on that now, however, not when he had such a fascinating child to observe.

The boy managed to draw his pencil across the page with the delicate finesse of a practice artist (well, as much delicate finesse, as an artist his age could possess), and from what Erskine could see of his work it was very impressive indeed. But he was far more interested in the obviously split lip from which poked a pink little tongue, so lost was the child in his concentration. That, coupled with the spectacular shiner that covered the boy’s left eye - and nearly half his face at that - and the scraped and bruised knuckles, painted a picture of a young scrapper rather than a young artist in training. The child didn’t seem to think anything of his injuries and out of the corner of his eye, Abraham noticed one of the waitresses occasionally glancing at the boy in concern then shaking her head as if she was bowing down to the inevitable already. Eventually, that same waitress came over to Abraham’s booth to take his order. He put in a simple order of coffee and pancakes for lunch. Making sure to offer the waitress a warm smile when she appeared to give him a suspicious double take. It did not seem to reassure her much although she did her best to return the gesture. 

He fought the urge to frown down at his hands. He wasn’t used to people not warming up to him immediately anymore. Usually, they mistook Abraham for a friendly, if a bit kooky, old man and dismissed him as such. This woman, however, seemed to see beyond his friendly old man persona to the wolf that laid beneath it. And he couldn’t decide if he was put off by her perceptiveness or intrigued by it. Clearly, she had experience with werewolves before if she could so quickly suss Abraham out for what he really was. Accepting the fact that there was nothing he could do about her knowing right now, he went back to his private inspection of the child.

This time, he noticed the minute details that marked a familial resemblance between the boy and the waitress. The way their noses came to a rounded point, the slight furrow between their eyebrows as they stared in focus concentration at an object, and then there was the similar fan of freckles dotted across high cheekbones. Now that he saw it there was no denying the fact that the waitress and boy were related, possibly brother and sister, but a quick discreet sniff proved that they were actually mother and pup. His sniffing was interrupted by the waitress - “Sarah” her name tag read - placing his order down in front of him.

“Enjoy,” she directed him pleasantly enough although her body language suggested otherwise. Abraham decided to do as she suggested and picked up his fork. Sarah nodded approvingly at him then went over to the next booth to check in on the boy. She spoke lowly to him, so much so that Abraham with his enhanced werewolf hearing couldn’t pick up on what she said. That only piqued his curiosity further and when she looked back at him after finishing talking to her son he would have sworn he saw a line of violet along the edge of her blue irises and caught the distinct electrical charge of magic. Curiouser and curiouser. He couldn’t help but follow her with his eyes as she went back to her station.

“Hey mister!” A small pugnacious little voice interrupted his staring and he whipped his head back around to find himself face to face with the boy leaning over the back of the booth facing him his eyes narrowed, the bruising around his one eye-enhancing their startling blue color. “Don’t you know it’s rude to stare?”

And that was how Abraham met the Rogers. It took him six months to convince Sarah that moving into his building and renting an apartment from him wouldn’t be charity, in fact, she’d be doing him a favor since his pack had been without a trained Emissary for nearly a decade. Then another five years for Sarah to finally agree that yes she and Steve were full-fledged members of the Erskine pack. Despite the fact that she had been performing the duties of his Emissary for the past five years and her son Steven was always at his side whenever his health allowed. The boy had even taken to calling him dad not too long after Abraham had brought them into the fold, not to be confused with his da, Joseph Rogers.

**🐺~🐺~🐾~🐺~🐺**

_Can't even mess it up although we both try  
No, it don't always go the way we planned it  
But the wolves came and went and we're still standing_

Clint came to him in the summer of 1994. It had been an unseasonably warm summer, even for Brooklyn. What with the buildings holding in the summer heat then baking in it. And everyone was becoming cranky with it. There was only so much a handful of window aircon units and fans could do to combat a heatwave.

Currently, Abraham was only sharing the penthouse - as the top floor apartment was referred to - with a handful of the younger pack members. The rest were old enough that they could live on their own, having either gone off to college or gotten married and were wanting to start their own families now, in both cases craving their own spaces and not the overcrowding of the top floor apartment. A prime example was William and Lian May with their daughter Melinda or the Prydes. Or Wade Wilson whose age Abraham had yet to get a handle on but had to be in his twenties at the very least; there was no need for him to be living in the same space as his Alpha not when he could have an apartment all to himself. Still, at the night of the summer the brownstone stood empty, he had rented out any apartments to non-pack members in a while and the ones occupied by family were standing empty because they’d decided to escape the summer in the city and take a vacation. Some of the kids were away at various summer camps, like Anna Marie and Kitty at a summer program for gifted children run by the Xavier Institute up in Westchester. Only Scott, Jessie, and Matt were home for the summer. 

August in Brooklyn could be brutal, and it was with that in mind that Abraham decided to take the kids out to Coney Island. It would get them out of the apartment, and out of the brownstone for longer than just going up to the rooftop garden. They needed out of the stale humid air just percolating within the building and a chance to stretch their legs, maybe even work off some of their exuberant energy. _Yes, a chance to go running around Luna Park and up and down the boardwalk was just what the doctor ordered_ , Abraham thought to himself just as he heard something smash somewhere in the apartment and the sound of shouting.

They didn’t get to go all that often, what with family outings usually meaning that the whole extended pack joined them and it was often difficult to coordinate that many conflicting schedules for one event. Mostly because there were always a handful of family members busy working for Aunt Pegs at S.H.I.E.L.D. Dum-Dum, Denier, and Gabe certainly couldn’t seem to shake the habit of working for secret ops, particularly Gabe since he went and mated Carter. The two of them made a hell of a team together. 

Abraham damn near had a stampede on his hands when he told the troublesome threesome that they were going to go to Coney Island for the day. But the kids got themselves squared away fairly quickly and they were out the door and on their way before Abraham could worry for the structural integrity of the brownstone. He was often amazed by the amount of noise one fifteen-year-old and two nine-year-olds could make. 

Thankfully they were, generally speaking, well-behaved kids and knew when to pay attention which made traveling on the subway less of a hardship than it needed to be. He fully expected them to just run wild and free once they reached their destination but in the meantime, the three kept close to his side even though it clearly chafed at them. Once they reached Luna Park Abraham gave each of the kids ten dollars to use for snacks and carnival games found along the boardwalk. He set them loose with the tacit understanding that they would all meet him at Nathan’s in an hour and a half for something more substantial than cotton candy to have for lunch. Abraham made them each promise twice as well as repeat the agreed-upon time before he finally let them loose on the unsuspecting masses. He watched them go, Scott, bending down to describe a particular arcade game to Matt while Jessica beelined it straight towards the strongman game. He had to chuckle at the kids' predictability and couldn’t help but wish that Jack was still around to witness his son’s joy. Shaking his head trying to dispel the regrets for things he could not change Abraham set off for a stroll along the boardwalk.

The sounds of Coney Island in full swing took over his senses and Abraham wallowed in it, taking a deep breath he used the noise of the wooden roller coaster and the carousel as well as the sounds of the buskers calling out to passersby to tempt their luck to center himself. The last time he had spoken to both Howard and Peggy they had disturbing information to share. Both expressed concerns that Hydra was not as much of a part of history as they had come to believe. Howard had noticed someone trailing him for the last few months as well as a handful of break-ins into his private lab and office at Stark Industries. Break-ins where files had either gone missing entirely or were left out of place just enough for Howard to know immediately that someone had been snooping around his projects and personal files. While Carter had chatter on airwaves that had been considered dead since the War about a possible assassination attempt on the entire Stark pack. None of it was anything he had wanted to hear. 

Abraham never wanted to even think that it was possible for Hydra to return in his lifetime, but then again, he’d thought he would have never seen the likes of Hitler and his Nazis, to begin with, and obviously, he had been wrong. By now, he should’ve learned not to underestimate bigotry and the lengths some individuals would go to to protect their so-called right to hate others indiscriminately for no good reason. It was a puzzle and he doubted that there was any real solution to it that would make everyone happy in the end. The only way to do away with hate was to not tolerate it all in the first place and lately, it seemed like everyone preached nothing but tolerance. Even to the determinant of their own well-being. 

Lost in his thoughts he continued on his way towards the beach. But he wasn't so far gone in his head that he didn’t notice when a young teen brushing past him and the feeling of a smallish hand slipping into the inside pocket of his blazer to grab at his wallet. Reacting quickly, using his werewolf reflexes, Abraham grabbed a hold of the boy’s wrist before his hand could completely withdraw with its prize - being careful not to squeeze too hard, he wanted to startle the child not harm him. He’d expected the boy to be shocked into standing still but what Abraham got instead was a young man who immediately started struggling hissing and cursing at him to let him go;

“What are you some kinda creep - you’re sick old man, let me go already!”

“Young man,” Abraham interrupted him sternly, putting a bit of Alpha steel into his words. The child stopped his thrashing instantly. He did not care in the least for how the boy trembled in terror, oh he tried to hide it but it was obvious to anyone paying enough attention. “If you get caught trying to pick someone’s pocket the least you could do is own up to your mistake.”

The little urchin had the gall to curl his lip at Abraham. He couldn’t help but lean back a little at that and regard the boy with one judgmentally raised eyebrow. Clearly, manners weren’t high on his list of priorities. Studying the adolescent before him Abraham was surprised to note that he was only slightly younger than Scott - he’d guess no younger than thirteen - when at first he’d assumed that the boy had to be at least the same age as Scott if not older. He had what Abraham suspected was naturally dirty blond hair but it was difficult to tell for sure underneath the grime of it having gone unwashed for a number of days. Sniffing delicately, he could tell that it had been some time since the boy had a proper washing up in general. He also caught the distinct smell of an adolescent werewolf who had yet to present their secondary gender. It was becoming clear to him now that the boy was on his own, abandoned either through fate or by choice, and struggling to look after himself. Abraham wasn’t about to leave him alone any longer if he had any say in the matter.

“Where is your pack?” He questioned the would-be thief clearly taking him by surprise with the question judging by the way his eyes went almost comically wide. Abraham watched as the boy’s nostrils flared scenting the air far less subtly than he had himself.

“I don’t have or need a pack _alpha_ ,” he snarled. 

Abraham had to respect his bravado. Not many adults would have the gumption to directly defy an Alpha werewolf and here this little beta wolf was doing just that. It saddened Abraham as much as he found himself impressed by it, because it spoke of a tragic background that something had gone horribly wrong in his life for him to feel such vitriol towards packs.

“Yes, yes I can see this,” Abraham agreed neither sarcastic nor patronizing, still the boy blushed in embarrassment at his statement. “Still, would you like to borrow a pack for the day?”

“I’m not going to fall for any tricks,” he growled going so far as to pop his claws even though Abraham was still holding onto his one wrist. Aware of the mundane people around them and wary of the boy drawing attention to themselves Abraham pulled him closer and quickly flashed Alpha red eyes at him. In return, the boys flashed the warm gold of a beta werewolf and he calmed down immediately. Abraham took note of that; an alpha voice, even just the hint of it, terrified the child whereas showing red eyes soothes him. 

“No tricks,” Abraham promised, finally letting go of the boy's wrist, “I am not in the habit of forcing those who do not want to into joining my pack.”

The boy studied him with the most judgmental look he’d ever received in a long time.

“Here,” Abraham said, opening his wallet and pulling out two twenties and a ten, then handing them to the young werewolf. " You can take this and if you want to follow me you can, if you don't then you don't and you haven't lost out on anything. Reasonable, yes?"

The boy gave him one hell of a hairy eyeball before hesitantly reaching for what he would have happily stolen without a second thought. Abraham was careful to keep his thoughts, and amusement, to himself. He knew how sensitive adolescent boys could be when they felt their egos were being mocked. It could be a difficult line to balance, giving young boys a healthy sense of self-esteem without overly inflating their egos to the point that they felt entitled to anything and everything just because they wanted it. He likes to think he’s learned how to walk it without causing too much permanent damage, unfortunately, one can never know until after the fact.

Abraham made a show of checking his watch then after the boy had taken the money. “Well, I must get back to meet with some rambunctious _kinder_ if you will please excuse me. I do hope you’ll decide to join us, but as I said, I will not force you.”

At that Abraham turned on his heel and headed back towards Nathan’s to meet up with his kids as he had planned. He could only hope that the boy would decide to follow him. Although, truth be told he doubted that he would. Kids as street smart and overly cautious as that poor child were often difficult to convince that Erskine and the rest of his pack were trustworthy.

He was pleasantly surprised when he heard the sound of light footsteps carefully shadowing him as he made his way back up the boardwalk. The closer he got to Nathan’s and the thicker the crowd grew the closer the footsteps drew to him as if their owner did not want to lose him in it. Abraham smiled to himself and it only grew bigger as he spotted Scott, Matt, and Jess there waiting for him, not just on time but early for a change. Things could not have worked out more perfectly if Abraham had planned them himself. Who better to help him convince the little pickpocket that they were on the level than Jessica, who had taken some convincing herself, Scott, who’s evercescant cheer was infectious, and Matt, who did not allow others to treat him like a doormat just because he was blind. They had already grabbed a picnic table and Abraham went to join them, his shadow steadily keeping pace. 

“Have we decided what we all want to eat?” He greeted the kids to which Jess handed him a list written out on a neon blue post-it note. She was always guaranteed to have a notebook or notepad on her along with some sort of writing utensil at all times. Usually tucked away in a pocket of the oversized leather jacket she always wore. 

“Just need you to decide what you want Pops,” she told him, deliberately popping the ‘p’ at the end. She was under the impression that it annoyed him and it suited him to let her think it.

Abraham noticed Scott looking around him at his new acquaintance and he stepped aside so that all four children would be able to openly assess each other without breaking their necks pretending at secrecy. At this point, the blond pickpocket actually moved closer to Abraham as if seeking reassurance from him. An interesting development.

“Children, this is my friend,” he left the sentence hanging open hoping that the boy would take the initiative and supply his own name, he was happy not to be proven wrong.

“Clint.”

“He’ll be joining us for lunch today. Please make him feel welcome while I go get our food.”

With a hotdog from Nathan’s and some spirited conversation from some of his peers Clint was soon persuaded to join them on their return trip to Bed-Stuy. Clint took some initiative and asked Matt if he would like to take his arm for the walk. Abraham stood back and allowed the kids to work their magic on Clint simply made sure to usher them along. He was half-convinced that by the time they got back home Clint wouldn’t want to leave. After so many years of bringing in new pack members, Abraham had a knack for knowing when someone would be a good fit. Clint would make a very good fit for their pack and this was proving to be an excellent litmus test for all of them to discover just how good of a fit he would be. 

**🐺~🐺~🐾~🐺~🐺**

_When there ain't a crack in the foundation  
Baby, I know any storm we're facing  
Will blow right over while we stay put  
The house don't fall when the bones are good_

1994 turned out to be a tipping point. By the next year, the Erskine pack had not only gained Clint as a new pack member, but Sarah had also decided to, _finally, officially accept Abraham’s offer for her and Steve to become full fledged pack members. She might have had alternative motives having found both Thor and Loki and bartered her skills, and renown as an Emissary to bring them into the fold. But Abraham had seen nothing wrong with her little manipulation, especially not after he learned of the sixteen-year-old and thirteen-year-olds situation._

Sarah discovered them huddled in a corner of the emergency room hiding from Thor’s father, Loki’s foster father while waiting for Loki to be seen by a doctor. It was obvious to Sarah at first sight that Thor’s wolf saw Loki as his mate. At such a young age it was a rarity to find one’s mate but not entirely unheard of. But Thor’s father had gone ballistic at the idea of his alpha son expressing interest in some human omega, a foster child. Pack Asgard was known to be a very traditionalist pack and Odin Borson a strict Alpha. It did not take a stretch of the imagination to guess how Odin reacted to what he considered an inappropriate attachment. From the state of Loki, it was obvious to Sarah that his foster father had taken out his frustration on the boy and only the human boy. Not his werewolf son who would have eventually healed from the wounds inflicted by his Alpha. Clearly, Odin blamed Loki for everything.

Sarah sat with them until the doctor could see Loki and slowly, she got the whole story out of the boys. As a former pack emissary, she - and the mate of a pack Alpha herself, god how she’s missed Joseph – knew the signs of a burgeoning mate-bond when she saw one. Careful questioning of Thor while they waited for Loki’s cuts and bruises to be attended to, revealed that the Asgard emissary, his mother Frigga, helped facilitate the boys’ escape. Thor was very forthcoming about the ins and outs of the inner workings of the Asgard pack and Sarah had to physically sit on her hands at one point to keep a hold of her Irish temper. The moment she’d spotted the boys in the waiting room she had planned on speaking to Erskine about them and now she’d be damned if they didn’t end up coming home with her tonight. It was lucky really that they had come in so close to the end of her shift.

It was even luckier that emissaries had their own back channels that no one else knew about. Frigga would be hearing more than a few words from Sarah tonight, the least of them would be that her son and foster son were safe. If she’d have to make a deal with the devil himself Sarah would, just to make sure that those boys wouldn’t be within a hundred feet in reach of Odin again. She was familiar with Borson’s reputation from when the Rogers pack was still a power in Ireland before Hunters wiped them out. And there was no doubt in Sarah’s mind that Frigga would back her, and if her boorish mate decided to make any fuss than Sarah had no problem getting the Supernatural Council involved. The Rogers name still held weight with them and she was associated with Erskine, the Alpha of Brooklyn, which was far more political weight than pack Asgard could bring to bear.

**🐺~🐺~🐾~🐺~🐺**

_When there ain't a crack in the foundation  
Baby, I know any storm we're facing  
Will blow right over while we stay put  
The house don't fall when the bones are good_

That was the core of Abraham’s family. A group of seemingly random strings gathered together and forged into a new pattern. Sometimes they butted heads and their personalities clashed, but they always resolved their differences. In the end, Abraham wouldn’t have had his pack, patchwork though it was, any other way. That was how he had built his current family, and piece by piece it fell into place with more added along the way - it was Clint who found and brought Natasha to them - and he would not change it for the world. 


	2. Late Night, at a Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: This chapter has mentions the deaths of a couple of characters as well as past child abuse.

_When all is going wrong and you're scared as hell  
What you gonna do? Who you gonna tell?  
Maybe a hundred bad days made a hundred good stories  
A hundred good stories make me interesting at parties_

This was probably the cleanest Clint’s apartment had ever been in Steve’s living memory. Although to be fair, Steve didn’t really have a leg to stand on himself. His own place hadn’t been kept to the exacting standards of their parents lately. Losing Abraham had been rough on everyone. Particularly the _way_ in which they lost him. Even two years later it was hard to believe that Abraham was gone, that he had been murdered. They didn’t even have the satisfaction of knowing that the person responsible for Abraham’s death had been caught and prosecuted. There were plenty of rumors about who was responsible, however, rumors about a ghost story of a man credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years. Some members of the pack didn’t put any stock in such rumors, but the rest did.

Dad had done enough clandestine work with S.H.I.E.L.D over the years that it wasn’t much of a stretch to accept that an assassin that most of the intelligence community didn’t believe existed was responsible. His relationship with Director Carter was well known in certain circles as well as his friendship with Howard Stark. If there was a reason for someone to want to set the Winter Soldier on a peaceful alpha, then a strong connection to both S.H.I.E.L.D and the Stark pack would be it. Some pack members like Matt, Foggy, Jessica, and the others living in Hell’s Kitchen away from the main packhouse thought that it was a strenuous connection at best, a reach really. The information provided by Nick and verified by Natasha wasn’t enough for them. It was enough for Steve though.

Then again, he’d always been willing to believe in ghost stories. He’d grown up listening to ma telling him what had happened to his da and their original pack; Steve himself might have only been thirteen months old at the time and barely able to form memories of his own, but Sarah’s were enough for him. And she would tell a lurid tale of Hunters tearing through the pack lands, razing everything to the ground, in the wake of a masked man with a metal arm. Ma had uprooted them from Ireland as soon as she could, and Steve’s most prominent memories were of him growing up in Flatbush, just him and Sarah until Abraham had found them.

Regardless of who was responsible the result was the same, Abraham was dead and for a time their pack was left feeling rudderless. Clint was as ready to lead as he could be, dad had made a point of including his chosen successor in all of his decision making processes and introducing him to trusted allies. But nothing, nothing, was going to prepare Clint a born beta, and turned werewolf, for receiving the Alpha spark. And there was just no way of knowing how he would react to it until after the spark had passed onto him. Abraham had planned to voluntarily give up the spark in another year or two so that he could help coach Clint through the transition of power before fading into the background, but that choice had been stolen from them.

Abraham had been their constant north star for longer than anyone could remember - he was their founder and father, their stalwart guardian - and that was a lot for anyone to live up to. For a long time, it had felt like Abraham would always be there for them. A particularly tough act to follow, especially for a former Iowa hick turned one-trick carney - as Clint liked to jokingly (and not so jokingly) call himself. 

Thank god for Sarah Rogers. 

While Abraham had been the person that everyone relied upon, that they took for granted would always be there, Sarah had been his right-hand woman. A fitting position of trust for the pack Emissary. After the murder, Sarah tucked away her own grief in order to guide them all through the turbulence of transitioning to a new Alpha. Despite having to lead the pack for a solid six decades – ever since its inception – and having a plethora of worthy heirs it was understood by the core members who remained in Brooklyn with Abraham and those packmates who went on to either form their own family packs or join others that he had a particular person in mind. No one bothered to question Clint’s validating in leading them, no one other than Clint himself. 

Sarah helped him through that insecurity and the first few rough months of gaining his footing as a pack leader, to get a handle on his freshly gained Alpha powers which changed his status from a beta werewolf to an alpha even though physically he remained a beta. A hard adjustment to make even at the best of times, but during circumstances such as the one they found themselves in, it could easily destroy a pack. Nobody wanted to see their family fall apart. Sarah, especially, wouldn’t stand for it. Therefore she carried the burden of leadership whenever Clint found himself flattering. She helped him to choose who should be his second and who should serve as his left hand. All while continuing to train Loki as her apprentice. Sarah wanted him to be prepared to take over for her one day as the pack’s Emissary when she was ready to step down or to move on to apply to be another pack’s Emissary if he so wished. Anyone who knew Loki, however, doubted for one second his commitment to his family; for all that he could sometimes be a crotchety bastard and acted like the affection of any sort was hive inducing, Loki could be the most loving of them. He just liked to hide it in prickliness and layers and layers of sarcasm – Loki could be complicated, like a maze, or an onion. 

Besides, Thor's loyalty to Clint was unshakable and Thor was basically built-in insurance to keep Loki’s interest.

Sarah did all of this at the expense of her own health. She ran herself ragged to give her boys hope in the wake of their loos and by the time anyone noticed it was too late. Werewolves could live for an incredibly long time, Sparks as well, but at the end of the day a Spark was still basically human, and no matter how powerful or how well-trained, no Spark could live forever. All fires die out eventually, and not even Sarah Rogers, powerful Spark that she was, could use magic to escape the clutches of cancer when modern medicine failed. – Not without delving into some seriously dark arts and twisting their souls beyond recognition. Sarah would’ve flayed anyone alive with a well-deserved tongue lashing if they dare suggest she or anyone else use dark magic to prolong her life. – Furthermore, as a magic-user, Sarah couldn’t escape her illness through the gift of the Bite because there was more than a 50/50 chance that it could kill it; it was more like a 90/10 percent certainty. She was basically damned if she did try to do anything and damned if she didn’t. When it came to the choice about who she should, and what she should, tell about her illness she thought herself in-between a rock and a hard place.

This might as well explain why she kept quiet about her declining health for as long as she could reasonably keep it to herself. Living amongst ‘wolves she managed to keep the secret for a surprisingly long time, although some might say she cheated, using magic to disguise the scent of sickness and medicine that started to cling to her. Still, there came a day when she could no longer keep her diagnosis to herself. At that point, she judged Clint to be confident enough in his role as Alpha Barton of the Erskine pack, and the rest of the family recovered from Abraham’s death to burden them with further bad news. Seeing how far her boys had come, the kind of men they had grown into, Sarah thought that if now she had to be parted from them, then she couldn’t have been prouder of them than she already was.

But watching Sarah’s steady decline wasn’t easy for anyone. It was particularly difficult on her boys – her little hawk, her Viking, her mischief, and her sunshine boy – and, unexpectedly, she found it hard to keep a brave face in front of their stalwart attempts to cheer her up. They were all very much aware of exactly how much of their lives she could end up missing out on. That’s probably why they all made the conscious choice not to focus on what Sarah would, or could, be missing out on, and proceeded as normal as much as they could with a special effort made to spend more quality with her while they still could. While it was difficult to watch the changes the chemotherapy wrought on her, no one wanted to waste a potential moment that could be spent in her company. Especially not after how quickly Abraham was stolen from them. It was a hard lesson to learn how precious time was and they had all just learned it in one of the most harrowing ways it could be taught.

When the chemo started to fail her after the second round of treatment the decision was made to set up a hospice bed for her in the top floor apartment of the brownstone. It’s the same apartment that was once Abraham’s and they all had briefly shared. Both Steve and Loki had learned some of the art of herbal medicine at Sarah’s elbow and took turns in keeping her well stocked with healing tinctures where modern medicine failed her. But there was only so much that could be done to fight the inevitable, especially as the will to keep fighting drained away from Sarah. Eventually, there came a day where Steve came home from work to discover that Sarah had passed away when no one was home to be with her.

Her funeral was subdued, the wake, in proper Irish fashion, was not.

Sarah Rogers' passing may have been less dramatic than Abraham’s but it was no less devastating. Where Abraham had been the pack’s moral center, their backbone, Sarah had been their heart and soul. Each member of the pack mourned her passing in their own way. For some, losing Sarah just a little over a year after Abraham brought them closer together, but for Steve, it just shattered his world anew. He’d fallen into a deep depression the likes of which he hadn’t seen in years – not since dad had gotten him to agree to go to therapy and actually talk out his issues instead of allowing others to beat him bloody – and had fallen back on bad habits. For the formative years of his life, it had just been him and ma against the world and now he was having a difficult time believing that he’d never see her again, never be able to seek her out for her sage advice, or just a hug, on the days when everything got too overwhelming and all he wanted was the reassurances only a mother’s presence could bring.

“Earth to Steven, yo I asked you how do I look?” Trust Clint to burst Steve’s morose bubble with all the tack of a sledgehammer. The man was always coming across as clumsy and tactless but Steve saw it for the act that it was. After all what better way to get others to let their guards down around you if they thought you were nothing more than a hapless clown. Sometimes it worked against him but mostly his dumb blond routine worked in his favor and people were always underestimating him. The thought made Steve pause for a moment as he realized that he, Clint, and Thor, each in their own way worked the dumb blond stereotype to their favor. It made him chuckle and he couldn’t decide if it was Loki’s or ma’s hand behind that.

Sadly, however, Clint’s infamous love of the color purple and _need_ to include as much of the color in every outfit as possible, no matter the shade or if it clashed or not, wasn’t an act. It was just part of his lovable charm. Tonight’s getup was a prime example; a pair of black jeans that had more holes and frayed spots than fabric with some of the holes having been rather haphazardly patched with purple fabric in various shades, a black t-shirt with a stylized drawing of Mr. Owl the tootsie pop mascot, licking away at a tootsie pop and the words “How many licks?” floating above his head. What pulls it together though are the scuffed-up black chucks with purple tongues and laces. Altogether, it actually isn’t a horrible outfit but still rather inappropriate for tonight’s event. If they were going clubbing then Clint would have been right on the money with his choices, but this was meant to be a business casual-like event, and he needed to show more maturity than his current clothing choices indicated. Steve scrunched his nose up giving Clint a once over and bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from laughing at the way Clint’s face fell.

“Okay, what’s wrong?”

“You either need to get rid of the jeans or change the shirt; you can keep the chucks,” Steve answered him bluntly, giving him the news straight on.

“We said that this was a casual get together!” was Clint’s immediate protest and _no, he didn’t_ whine _, Steven. Alpha’s_ don’t _whine._

“True,” Steve acknowledged ignoring the obvious bellyaching, he didn’t have time to be sidetracked by an argument with Clint over whether he was complaining or not. “But there’s a difference between a casual get together with pack members and one that includes “illustrious”,” the air quotes were audible, “members of the Supernatural Council, other Alpha’s and members from their packs, especially when we’re trying to impress them.”

“Aww, Steve, why do you gotta be such a stickler for social graces?”

“Because one of us should remember the manners ma tried to teach us, even if we all forget them when it's convenient.” Steve shot back making Clint grin wolfishly in return. “Here’s how it's going to be, you can either deal with me or I can go get Loki. Who will not only demand that you change the entire outfit but also be pissy about it because I’ll have to interrupt his own beauty routine to get him up here.”

“Okay that’s just rude,” Clint points out, actually going so far as to point his finger at Steve.

Steve raises an eyebrow at his oldest brother before grabbing the offending digit and using it to drag Clint behind up the iron-wrought staircase to his lofted bedroom. “Extremely rude,” Clint muttered as he stumbled along behind Steve. At that, Steve did chuckle out loud.

Up in the loft was the familiar mess that Steve had come to expect to see encompassing the entire apartment in the last few years. Same days he swore that the various piles of clothing, either clean, messy, or waiting to pass the sniff test, piles of mail, books, and newspaper, and used coffee cups, even coffee carafes with fringes of coffee still clinging to the bottom; were all their own ecosystem. But it was all typical of Clint. He’d been better about containing everything to one space when ma and dad had been around to help him but now, now it just got away from him sometimes.

Where depression made Steve want to obsessively clean and organize everything in sight to try and exert some kind of control over his life until eventually he ran out of steam and collapsed into a blanket nest for a week or two. Depression hit Clint differently, leaving him wallowing in a mess of executive dysfunction until some outside force – lately it was Natasha, although it used to be ma – propelled him into taking care of himself and his surroundings by first showing him the way how to again. Oh, he’d participate in everyday life, he just wasn’t always careful with himself. Then again, the same could be said of Steve.

“Nat help you clean up?” Steve asked offhandedly, letting go of his brother’s offending appendage and heading directly towards the overflowing closet in search of a more appropriate shirt for tonight’s shindig. Immediately he started to flick through the hangers hoping that the elusive perfect shirt would present itself.

“Nah, Katie-Kate came by and helped me out earlier,” came the answer. It was slightly muffled, and Steve knew without turning around that Clint was removing his t-shirt.

Well, that answered the lingering question as to why the downstairs was immaculate but up here still looked like a warzone. Kate had strong opinions about how much she was willing to help and the line was firmly drawn at cleaning up anything more than empty pizza boxes. Still, that would’ve gotten Clint started and once he was aware of the mess and as long as Kate stuck around and kept him company while he cleaned it wouldn’t have taken him long at all to get things squared away. And naturally, he’d just stick to cleaning the downstairs, the ‘public’ spaces of the apartment and Kate wouldn’t argue with that whereas Natasha would have pushed him to just clean the whole apartment at once. Steve understands the theory behind that but he also gets why sometimes Clint just doesn’t want to, and honestly what’s the harm? No one should be up here, and a little disorganized clutter never hurt anyone.

“Rogers, why are you even bothering to look in there? I’m pretty sure I either tossed or changed all of my button-downs into muscle shirts ages ago – just give up and switch shirts with me already, folks are supposed to be here any minute now and we haven’t set out the snacks yet.”

“What! No, your shirt will never fit me, we’re completely different sizes,” Steve objected, which only earned him an eye roll from Clint. “Don’t roll your eyes at me, Clint, it’s true!” 

“Steve, we wear the same size shirt,” Clint informed him, blank-faced and speaking slowly as if Steve was having a hard time hearing him.

“No we don't,” Steve insisted and that denial earned him a strange, disbelieving look. 

Clearly, Clint had decided not to bother discussing it further because he simply shrugged before proceeding; “We do,” he countered sounding fondly exasperated, “now don’t argue, there isn’t time for you to be stubborn. Please just switch shirts with me, I’ll even tuck it in if that’ll make you feel better about it. C’mon _please_.”

“Oh fine,” Steve gave in reaching up and swiftly unbuttoning the blue button-down he was wearing. “You do realize that you’re going to look like a kid playing dress-up and swimming in his dad’s clothes though, don’t you?”

Clint snorted at that even as he pulled on the shirt now sporting a few more wrinkles than it had before. To Steve’s surprise it actually did fit the beta in the arms and only was slightly loose through the shoulders and chest. Clint tucked it into his jeans after buttoning it closed. Once he was all put back together Clint held his arms out for inspection stopping just short of letting loose a sarcastic ‘tada’.

“Alright, so it fits but now you sort of look like a walking bruise.”

“And that’s different from any other day how?” Clint asked with an arched eyebrow.

“Well, at least now you look like a respectable bruise as opposed to your usual,” Steve replied face deadpanned. His answer caused Clint to burst out laughing just like he’d hoped it would.

“Pot meet kettle,” Clint shot back through his laughter. He threw the walking tootsie pop advertisement he’d been calling a shirt directly at Steve’s head and the sound of the apartment door banging open distracted Steve enough that he forgot to catch it. “Put that on Steve, it's showtime!”

Steve peeled the t-shirt off of his face in time to watch Clint go clobbering down the stairs and to hear the cheer of Thor’s greeting. Well, that answered the question of who arrived first. He stifled his own laugh even as he tried to shrug himself into the offered shirt. He’d half expected to bust out of the seams but to his surprise, it fit just fine, only slightly tighter threw his shoulders and across his chest than his usual shirts. Still feeling like it was a tad inappropriate for the evening that they had planned, he turned back to Clint’s closet and plucked out a purple shirt. Steve pulled it on and buttoned it up saying a silent farewell to Mr. Owl. That’s how he ended up attending a big important party soaked in the scent of his beta brother.

**🌻~🌻~🐺~🌻~🌻**

_I met you late night, at a party  
Some trust fund baby’s Brooklyn loft  
By the bathroom, you said let’s talk  
But my confidence is wearing off…_

Schmoozing his way through the gathered party-goers – a healthy mix of the three packs looking to negotiate under the benevolent eye of a few select council members – he did his best to play nice. Supposedly the purpose behind this inane display was a genuine wish to mend old alliances. He hadn’t heard such a crock of shit since Pierce tried to sell acts of terrorism as patriotism. The council was attempting to manipulate these three distinct packs – whose founders had wisely kept their packs as three separate entities despite their close times to each other – into one because it suited them to do so. And because it amused them.

For some reason, the council was hell-bent on seeing just how far they could push the current Alpha Erskine. They wanted to see just how much of his own autonomy he’d be willing to give up before he grew a spine and started to push back. A particularly foul tactic that set Bucky’s teeth on edge and put him in a thunderous mood. Especially since the old bastards on the council thought they had the perfect tool in James Buchanan Barnes to chip away at the younger Alpha’s confidence. So far, the boy appeared to be bending over backwards to give them exactly what they wanted.

 _There was no spine at all in this boy of an Alpha_ ; Bucky didn’t bother to hide the slight snarl that the thought caused and earned himself a discreet pinch in his side from Natasha for his troubles. Before he could fully register the redhead’s audacity, she’d slipped away from him using the crowd as cover. Damn Tasha and her impeccable sense of timing. The woman never missed a trick. If it wasn’t for that and the fact that she was rarely wrong about a person’s character once she’d done an assessment of them, then Bucky wouldn’t believe a single thing she’d told him about this Clint Barton. As it was, he had some serious doubts and couldn’t help but wonder if she’d lost her touch. Or if she was allowing emotion to cloud her judgment. There was a reason why the Widows were taught to compartmentalize everything to the point that they were basically emotionless and Hydra burned all emotion out of the Winter Soldier, honestly some days Barnes really missed the double-edged clarity of the Soldier.

This Barton, however, was more than a bit of a buffoon. He obviously wore his heart on his sleeve, which was foolish enough, to begin with. But then to add to his foolishness Barton was allowing himself to be pushed around by a group of stuffy old windbags who’ve long lost touch with the supernatural world they claimed to regulate, not to mention their tenuous at best grasp on reality as a whole. Some council members had buried themselves so deeply in their chosen hidden bolt holds that sunlight had to be shipped into them along with everything else, while other members so thoroughly bought into the notion that being supernatural equaled superior they hadn’t just placed supernatural creatures up on a pedestal they’d rammed the damn thing up their asses like a joystick. In the end, all it amounted to was a bunch of useless navel-gazing. And all that collective navel-gazing could come up with ways to make a game out of attempting to merge three separate packs who had gone their own ways years ago. Alliances and friendships forged during times of great adversity don’t always last – despite the yarns about great heroes and their merry band of helpers all fairytales liked to see to the gullible. When things move on naturally like that then it’s best to just leave them be, but stuffy old beings with nothing better to do are notorious for being incapable of leaving well enough alone. Moreover, they viewed the return to life of James Buchannan Barnes as the second coming and their best chance at manipulating the Stark, Erskine, and S.H.I.E.L.D. packs exactly where they wanted them.

Never mind the fact that it took the assassination of Abraham Erskine to bring Barnes back to himself. Then, of course, let’s just forget the inconvenient fact that Hydra had been hiding within S.H.I.E.L.D. for god knows how long before revealing themselves as a lesion at the center of the pack with Alexander Pierce as the main tumor. It had taken two years of fighting Pierce’s cancerous followers whilst trying to piece back together any knowledge of who he was prior to having his brain turned into scrambled eggs, just to prove that the Winter Soldier had been nothing more than a gun aimed at the next viable target. And after those two years, while Bucky felt like he had a better grasp on himself as a person, he couldn’t say the same about fighting back Hydra. It was a hard fight and one that had halved the size of S.H.I.E.L.D. easily. Making nice with other packs could help them regain their numbers quickly but there was still a question of loyalty – there was no way of guaranteeing that a borrowed pack member could be loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D.

This party was just the backdrop for the council’s mechanisms along with being a ridiculous display of waste and wealth. But pack Erskine couldn’t really afford a truly fancy party so they did the best they could, with bacon-wrapped pineapple passing as the height of a canapé. Which to be fair, Bucky had to admit they were quite delicious. He made his way to the edge of the crowd nursing the same drink he’s had since he entered the room, Bucky might not be able to get drunk anymore even with the help of wolfsbane, but appearances still had to be upheld. It looked better if he just nursed one beer all night long than to drink several. Bucky would rather have them think he was overly cautious around strangers than a lush.

Once Bucky was able to put his back to a wall, he was able to relax at least a little bit. He’d never been one for crowds, to begin with, and after the War then the decades spent as Hydra’s number one attack dog Bucky’s never warmed up to the idea of large gatherings. Too many opportunities for someone to catch a target unawares and kill them, if you asked him. (Okay, so in some respects, they had their uses, but he was trying to think like your average schmuck first, an assassin second, these days. Some days were easier than others). Hypervigilance could be a bitch but he’d rather be painfully aware of his surroundings at all times than blind to any potential attacks. Actually, truth be told, he’d rather be dead than find himself at the mercy of someone else’s will ever again. To some extent Bucky looked upon bonding in the same way, he didn’t want to be attached, for life, to some beta or omega only to have his free will imposed upon by another’s. For fuck’s sake he was just starting to warm up to the idea of taking care of a house plant and the sort of obligation that implied, he was by no means ready for more than a casual one-night stand – if he was even ready for that. An argument could be and had been made by Natasha no less, that he lacked the personal growth for even that much right now. And some days, he couldn’t honestly disagree with her.

He knew that that was the council’s main goal here, these negotiations were just the stage they had chosen to set the scene at. They wanted Bucky safely mated off to some docile thing that they’d believed they could control so that in turn they would have some means of controlling him from behind the scenes. Natasha would berate him for his blatant paranoia but he’d only remind her how they’d manipulated her into staying with S.H.I.E.L.D. for far longer than she’d ever wanted to. It’s not paranoia if you can prove that they’re really out to get you and Bucky had more proof than most. Some things he could let go of – some things he probably should just let them go – but other things he just couldn’t. an attempt to get him mated off to a ‘safe’ choice as part of these negotiations was one of those things he couldn’t let go. Particularly since it was being used as leverage against Barton for him to keep his position as the alpha of Erskine’s pack. Give the alpha formerly known as the Winter Soldier one of your pack members as a mate or lose your pack entirely to James Buchannan Barnes, Abraham Erskine’s first son. It was a shitty position to put anyone in and a terrible argument to make but the Supernatural Council wasn’t known for playing fair. 

Regarding the council’s terrible, no good, very bad plan, Natasha appeared to be of the opinion that Bucky should just watch and wait, give it a chance to see how everything might play out. She certainly seemed to think he should look upon this party hosted by pack Erskine as an opportunity to freely window shop. Simply because who knows he might, to quote Natalia, just _“get lucky enough to find someone whose lack of self-preservation perfectly matched his own lack of self-awareness and together they could form one complete idiot to rule them all.”_ Bucky had snorted at her statement with an aborted laugh which had been her goal all along. If only those who treated them both like ticking time bombs waiting to go off at the slightest provocation realized what dorks they actually were, their reputations would be ruined. Not that anyone would ever believe that a pair of “cold-hearted assassins forge in the frozen depths of Russian winters” could ever be something as commonplace as a nerd. He’d actually overheard some newbie pup at S.H.I.E.L.D. describe them exactly like that once and nearly strained his eyes from rolling them so hard. 

Natasha being so in favor of this ridiculous plot made Bucky suspicious that she had someone specific in mind that she’d hoped he would meet. The idea made his fangs itch, made him want to snarl, and growl, then rip something to shreds with his claws. Even his closest friend was willing to throw him under the bus for this matchmaking nonsense. At least it was slightly more tolerable coming from Natalia than complete strangers, but only slightly. He was inclined to forgive her because he understood that she was currently besotted with Barton and under the impression that everyone should be just as happy, just as lucky in love as her. She’s come a long way from the young girl who had convinced herself that love was for children.

Bucky had decided to take her advice under advisement (with an obligatory grain of salt considering her compromised state) and window shop. But not for a potential mate, just for someone to have a couple of hours of fun with. Natalia might not approve of his current string of flings but she couldn’t deny that they did help him in feeling more human. It helped immensely to be touched for a reason other than pain.

It was with that end goal in mind that Bucky carefully scanned the gathered crowd, filtering out the sights, smells, and sounds of the various gathered alphas, betas, and omegas – both human and werewolf – until he caught one that could hold his attention for a night. He just wanted to find a potential partner that his own inner alpha would consider compatible enough that the sex would be good, Bucky didn’t want anything more than that. Almost immediately his attention was captured by a blond man standing off by himself in a corner. The man was easily the same height as Bucky or even a little taller and built like a brick shithouse. He was wearing a deep purple shirt that looked to be at least two sizes too small, judging by how the buttons were nearly crying as they tried to keep it closed over the man’s well-toned chest, and dark washed jeans that hugged his legs in all the right places. Even though Bucky suspected that they could be tighter, his cardiovascular system might not survive the experience of that man in jeans so tight they looked painted on but good god, what a way to go.

Blondie kept himself tucked away in his solitary corner nursing a drink and only leaving for the occasional refill, skirting the edge of the crowds directly to the kitchen and then back again to his chosen spot. The way he deftly maneuvered himself around both the crowd and furniture in the apartment spoke of long familiarity about the place. That and the fact that the few members of pack Erskine Bucky had already been introduced too – namely Barton’s second, and Emissary – were perfectly comfortable with having Blondie at their backs told Bucky all he needed to know about which pack Blondie belonged to. There was no way that those two would be comfortable with anyone but family moving so freely within their personal bubble, and pack was family. Bucky was familiar enough with the Loki could bristle and snap at anyone the Spark didn’t care for getting too close to him than he was comfortable with – for a human the Emissary was more wolf than anyone else Bucky knew. He wouldn’t have wanted to cross the Spark, ever. Bucky got the sense that Loki could be absolutely vicious, and creatively so when properly motivated.

He kept as discreet an eye on Blondie as he could without appearing to be paying too much attention to the other man. He didn’t want to spook him. Bucky knew how his reputation as the Winter Soldier worked often against him when it came to trying to chat someone up. Particularly in circles where his past was well known – and Natalia wondered why he still preferred anonymous hookups. Really, the answer was self-evident.

Because he was paying so much attention to the kid, Bucky caught Blondie outright glaring at him more than once throughout the evening. And good _gawd_ if looks could kill then Bucky would be dead ten times over. To be perfectly frank though, Bucky didn’t mind catching the occasional death glare from Blondie, especially not the way his jaw clenched every time their eyes accidentally met. It sent chills down his spine to see that strong, square jaw clench. If he was somehow successful in convincing the kid to warm his bed, then Bucky just knew a good time would be had by all. The kid was giving off strong hate fuck vibes and sometimes those could be the best ones of all. Blondie might look all buttoned up and repressed but Bucky was willing to bet that he was dynamite in the sack.

Bucky subtly watched as Blondie finished his latest drink then weaved his way through the crowd towards the back of the apartment where the bathroom was located. Bucky had just about made up his mind that enough was enough with this flirting disguised as hateful eye contact and decided to do something about it. It was properly a caddish move on his part to plan to ambush the kid as he was getting out of the bathroom but Bucky thought that option offered more discretion than the alternative but in the end, the question of appropriateness became moot when he was interrupted – physically – by another body colliding with his and knocking him back a step.

“Hey, _oh_ Winter, my man! How ya doin’ buddy?” The human projectile otherwise known as Wade Wilson badgered him, grabbing up his left hand in both of his own and shaking it enthusiastically. The metal in his arm nearly vibrated from the force of Wilson’s handshake and he half expected it to fall off. “Didn’t think I’d actually see you here. Kinda exciting isn’t it? Everyone comin’ back together again. Do you think this whole merging of the three most powerful packs thing is going to work? Or is it just another example of a bunch of old windbags out of touch with reality touching themselves for a brief moment of self-gratification?”

“Wade, I didn’t realize that you’d be here,” Bucky replied trying to pry his metal hand free with his flesh hand from Wilson’s enthusiastic grip

“Oh yeah, good ole Abe found me and took me in years ago, finally made an honest-ish man outta me. It’s all awesomesauce having a family again. I’m surprised you remember me, what with last time you being all half freezer burned and still loopy with it.”

“What can I say, Wilson, you make quite the impression.”

“Hell _yeah!_ ” Wade agreed finally letting go of Bucky’s hand and striking a superhero’s pose, both arms flexed to show off his biceps and his fists placed at his hips, his chin tilted back heroically. “The Merc with the Mouth ain’t easy to forget, baby. In more ways than one,” he concluded with a saucy wink and a blatant once over of Bucky.

“Wilson,” Bucky growled playfully falling in line with Wade’s cheek, “I think you’re trying to convince me of something that never happened.”

“Who can say,” he said with a shrug, “but I wouldn’t ever be opposed, daddy.” And with that reply, Wilson batted his eyelashes outrageously then turned on his heel and sauntered off back into the crowd from where he materialized from. Bucky couldn’t help it. He threw his head back and laughed out loud at the other man’s antics. Those nearby paused in their conversations startled by the sound of him actually laughing. From some of the side-eyed looks he received, you would’ve thought that these people expected him to have a cartoon villain’s laugh. As his laughter died out, he caught sight of Blondie staring at him in admiration. Admiration quickly turned into a baleful glare when he caught Bucky looking in his direction again. Oh, convincing him was going to be a challenge but Bucky was up for it.

Bucky continued making his way towards the blond with only the occasional interruption but none as noteworthy as Wilson’s. Finally, he’d just about neared Blondie’s side and only had a few more obstacles to clear. He couldn’t wait to see if sparks would fly between them just as well in person as they have done from a distance so far. For a moment he wondered if it would even be worth the effort of trying to sweeten up the kid enough to see if he’d be willing for a little romp in the sack, but then he drew close enough to catch a whiff of the kid’s scent. Here they were still struggling with the cold clutches of winter in mid-January; sludge buildup in both the streets and sidewalks and everything an unrelenting shade of grey with milder weather nothing but a distant dream when Bucky is literally walloped upside the head with all the scents of a warm summer day. One of those days that felt like summer would never end and anything was possible.

Bucky could picture it perfectly. Blue skies as far as the eye could see with only the occasional fluffy cloud lazily floating by. The city humming with activity and brimming over with captured warmth from the heat of the day. The smell of warm asphalt and chalk dust, fresh grass, and flowers, the slightest scent of rain on the breeze. The perfect summer day, just held in suspension to tease the senses. It reminded Bucky of his youth, of lazy carefree days playing in the park back when he had no idea what life had in store for him and he was convinced that he was invincible. Oh how he learned otherwise, invincibility did not come without its scars.

Captivated by the man’s scent Bucky drew ever closer to the man trying to pick out the undercurrent of pheromones that would've told him if Blondie was a beta, alpha, or an omega. If the kid was an omega then Bucky was going to have to cut his losses and bail. Given the bullshit, the council was currently trying to pull he figured that it was probably better not to be seen cozying up to an Erskine pack omega. He was absolutely relieved when he caught the distinct whiff of beta pheromones. Now he just needed to get the green light from Blondie himself then he’d be good to go to have all the consensual fun they wanted too.

He ducked around Tony’s outstretched arm and just barely avoided getting doused by the contents of his tumbler - all the better really, he’d rather not get a scotch shower at the moment. He noticed how Blondie studiously tried to ignore him and Bucky had to bite his lip to keep himself from laughing out loud at how badly the kid was failing at ignoring him. It was obvious to anyone paying attention that Blondie was at least a little bit interested, probably despite himself.

Bucky finally reached the kid’s side and was just about to introduce himself when he was treated to the kid’s death glare up close and personal. The way he clenched his jaw had Bucky worried that he was going to break his own teeth. From this distance, Bucky could see that there were little flecks of green in his ocean blue eyes.

“You’ve got some nerve,” the kid snapped at him without giving Bucky the chance to even say hello. 

Taken aback by the sheer vehemence in the kid’s voice Bucky physically recoiled from him and actually took a step back to put some space between them. Then he thought twice about what he was doing and leaned in.

“You wanna talk about nerve Blondie?” Bucky asked the kid, putting a little menace into his voice just to see how he’d react, “No one’s talked to me like that in years.”

“Hate to burst your bubble there, pal, but I’m not one to be intimidated by you.”

**🌻~🌻~🐺~🌻~🌻**

_A hundred bad days made a hundred good stories  
A hundred good stories make me interesting at parties  
Yeah, no, I ain't scared of you  
No, I ain't scared of you no more_

Steve watched the man wander through Clint’s apartment, mingling with their pack members like he had every right to be there, a part of civilized company. His gazed obsessively followed the larger than life ghost story as the man meandered his way through the apartment that had once been their family home. The very same space where Abraham had resided, had brought them together and made them feel whole, like a family. And there was the man who murdered their father strutting about the place, where the six of them were once one big happy family until jobs, college, and death ultimately pulled them apart, as if he owned it.

He kept himself tucked up in a corner, separating himself from the rest of the party, to keep himself from engaging with the alpha. Steve knew himself, and he knew that if he was given half the chance, he’d start an argument or a fistfight with the infamous Winter Soldier. He didn’t really give a rat’s ass about the fact that the man was an alpha or was a notoriously well-trained assassin slash mercenary. Steve had both the element of surprise and righteous fury on his side. The only thing keeping him from making a scene was Clint’s request that he try to _“avoid starting a fight for once in your life, fuck’s sake”_. Hence, Steve stewing in a corner sipping away at a whiskey cocktail, number three and counting, trying to keep himself out of trouble while obsessively keeping track of the man formerly known as the Winter Soldier. Steve was fully aware that the alpha was now going by the name James Buchannan Barnes (again), but he didn’t give two shits about that, as far as Steve was concerned Barnes, the Soldier, whatever the fuck he wanted to call himself, no longer had any claim to that name and the legacy attached to it. He certainly had no claim to Abraham’s legacy.

That’s what this party was truly about. Cleaning up the Winter Soldier’s image enough so that he could make the move to recreate a dynasty. Steve had spent a lifetime being overlooked – at first because he was a sickly omega and still human, then because after the Bite he looked like a dumb jock who still had the misfortune of being an omega; yes, even in the _woke_ 21st century couldn’t let go of their favorite stereotypes about omegas being inferior – and he used that to his advantage to listen. It was amazing the kind of things you just happened to overhear when everyone else forgot that you were around. That’s how Steve knew what was really going on, the true purpose behind these so-called negotiations. He only hoped that Clint wasn’t about to be taken for a fool.

Apparently after the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D and the reveal of Hydra still alive in the world, and thriving off the pack like a parasite, some people started craving the good old days. Back when packs Erskine, Stark, and S.H.I.E.L.D., were all basically one entity and they figured that Barnes made the best figurehead, the best Alpha to make that happen again. After all, he had known all of the founding Alpha’s personally in addition to being the first human to ever receive the Bite from Abraham. The man was considered a national treasure as The Sergeant in both human and supernatural societies, Sergeant Barnes and his Howling Commandos one couldn’t get through the school system anywhere in America or Europe without hearing about the WWII elite combat unit lead by Sargent Barnes. Those in the supernatural world, and therefore in the know, knew that the Commandos were more than a highly skilled and unusually lucky group of soldiers, they were a werewolf pack.

All of this made Barnes a compelling figurehead.

More important than his accomplishments as a WWII war hero, however, was Barnes’ pedigree. Werewolves, particularly born ‘wolves, put a greater emphasis on bloodlines than there needed to be. Loki liked to joke that once ‘wolves started tracing their pack ancestry it was akin to the AKC tracking a prized schnauzer’s lineage. It was famously documented that Barnes had been bitten and turned by Abraham Erskine, according to some people that made him the natural heir to the Erskine pack, not Clint and certainly not Steve. Clint, a born wolf of uncertain linage adopted by Abraham – saved from the circus as those set against him preferred to phrase things – and Steve was just an orphan of a dead Irish ‘wolf pack, a born human bitten when he came of age and an omega. In some people’s eyes, there were far too many strikes against them, enough to overlook the damage to and potential exposure of the supernatural world that Barnes was forced to commit as Hydra’s faithfully brainwashed pet.

To say Steve felt bitter about the politics of it all would be a massive understatement. He was infuriated by them. It did not help that he was still in mourning. They all were really, for dad and ma both. So what if Abraham’s death was two years ago, Sarah’s was far more recent, and here was the Supernatural Council spinning the yarn that assassinating Erskine was the shot that woke the sleeping Soldier up. Steve didn’t care if that was true or not, it was still poor taste to use Abraham’s death as propaganda for their stupid political agenda. Steve’s not some dumb blond, for as much as he plays one on TV, and he remembers dad’s stories about how the Council treated him like some supplicant, like scum on the bottom of their shoe, when he’d first petitioned for pack lands. He also recalls how Council representatives continued to treat dad as nothing more than an ignorant immigrant even as they attempted to court him for membership. This current bit of bullshittery was just another stellar example of the same crap, different day.

It was from Tony’s big mouth that Steve had learned the truth of the negotiations. Stark couldn’t keep a secret if he wasn’t fully invested in it – or it didn’t directly involve him and his – and while the ultimate plan was to merge the three packs the mechanism by which the Council wanted it done had nothing to do with Tony. They wanted Clint to offer Barnes an omega from the Erskine pack like a sacrificial lamb. The Council didn’t appear to care which of the pack’s omegas Clint gave to Barnes although Stark definitely had his opinions on the matter. According to Tony, none of pack Erskine’s omegas were off-limits, even those who had bonded already, and Barnes had his eyes on both Natasha and Loki. Both of whom were already in committed relationships, for fuck’s sake Loki was already bonded to Thor, and Nat was practically bonded to Clint the only thing stopping them was the fact that Natasha was still working for S.H.E.I.L.D.

Clint was hoping to use these negotiations to spring Natasha out of her last bit of obligation to the wolf pack that had taken on global peacekeeping yet couldn’t keep a global terrorist organization out of their own ranks. Given the givens, Steve thought that his brother was hoping for far too much. But then again, hope sprang eternal for those who were stupidly in love and that explained Clint and Nat even if the wilder world couldn’t, wouldn’t, see it. If anyone deserved their Happily Ever After it was those two, especially after Fury handed them such a raw deal. It didn’t matter that it was the only deal that could be made that kept Natasha off of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s hitlist (once they discovered where Clint had stashed her) it was still rotten. The worst part about it in Steve’s mind was that Nat honestly believed she needed to make amends and that with S.H.I.E.L.D. she would be doing good - and maybe if Aunt Peggy had still been at the helm she would have been, but Pegs had stepped aside as the Alpha of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Pierce took over. Alexander Pierce, it turned out wasn’t in the business of doing good, to put it mildly. Steve would be damned if he allowed anyone to come in between the two of them now that they were so close to being together freely.

That went doubly so for anyone attempting to break up Thor and Loki. Ma had recognized the two of them as true mates from the minute she spotted them and no one disputed that conclusion. They’ve practically been mated since sixteen and thirteen respectfully, only waiting until both of them were of age before making it official. Some might be weird out by the fact that they were raised together as brothers, but that kind of closeness wasn’t uncommon in werewolf packs. For fuck’s sake, Thor had even given up his birth family in order to stay with Loki and when asked, he never once regretted the decision. It was quite a decision for a sixteen-year-old to make but he didn’t hesitate for one moment. As for Loki, he once confided in Steve that the first time he ever felt like he had a family, an actual family, was when he joined the Erskine’s. That was an extraordinary admission coming from Loki, who was notorious for pretending like he’s made out of stone and ice, that no emotions can ever touch him, admitting to feeling like he belonged. Admitting to having found a place where he felt loved and cared for, for who he was, not what he could do, and loved everyone in return. 

How could Steve allow anyone to take that away from his brother? He couldn’t. That’s how.

Steve would rip out the lungs of anyone who tried. Without a second thought.

Which explained why he’s spent the majority of this party standing like a creeper off in a corner glaring at Barnes. The alpha was a threat to not one, not two, but all three of his brother’s happily ever afters. Steve didn’t care if Barnes was responsible for salvaging Aunt Pegs legacy, because in order to do so he had to first destroy her life’s work by revealing the rot at the foundation of it, or killing Pierce and then helping to root out the rest of Hydra. None of that mattered to him. If Barnes was such a good man, the good man dad had believed him to be, then he wouldn’t be going along with a scheme to destroy another person's happiness just so he could make some specious claim to be the Alpha of Brooklyn. And then, just when Steve was determined to hate him no matter what, the bastard had to go and laugh.

The omega in him reacted immediately to the adorable way Barnes’ nose wrinkled as he tilted his head back to let loose a belly laugh at whatever it was Wade had said to him. Steve noticed as his brown curls swayed over Barnes’ eyes as he continued to talk to Wade before leaving his side to continue his way through the crowd. Steve’s fingers itched to straighten out the man’s curls, to discover for himself if they were as soft as they looked if Barnes would rumble out a purr if he were to scratch his nails behind the alpha’s ears. Thankfully Barnes drew close then a cocky smile and self-assured gleam in his eye that was more than enough to get Steve’s back up again. The momentary confusion brought about by him finding an available alpha attractive might have caused him to snap at Barnes with more heat than he initially intended. The way Barnes drew back, eyes wide and startled, however, was too satisfying for Steve to feel bad about it. 

**🌻~🌻~🐺~🌻~🌻**

_I like that you’re broken  
Broken like me  
Maybe that makes me a fool_

To think that he’d assumed the blond would be shy just because he had been standing awkwardly by himself in a corner; that’ll teach Bucky to judge a book by its cover. The man was an absolute spitfire. He dressed like a hipster grandpa that made one immediately think of the caricature of ‘Mariam the Librarian’ which was in direct opposition to his obviously built frame. If Bucky was the type of alpha to noticeably salivate over a potential hookup, then he’d need a bucket. Blondie here was easily 6ft and 250 pounds, a respectable height, and heft for a beta, and Bucky found himself itching to sink his teeth into every inch of delectable muscle he could get his hands on. He would have to be careful to use only his human teeth on the kid – it would be bad matters in the extreme for him to turn another Alpha’s beta. Not to mention the unforgivable faux pas of gifting someone with lycanthropy without their permission.

Just then Blondie made a sweeping gesture as he continued to give Bucky the riot act about how he had a set of brass ones on him – showing up at the packhouse of an honorable man he’d murdered, then agreeing to some cockamamie scheme to make him Erskine’s heir. Bucky had tuned him out allowing the words to just flow over him, utterly amused by the beta’s sheer audacity at lecturing not just an alpha but the Winter Soldier for having been the Winter Soldier. The kid seemed to understand that Bucky didn’t have much of a choice, he was a weapon more than a man, but that hadn’t earned him his forgiveness. Bucky might’ve been hurt by that if he hadn’t come to expect that by now. He’s killed a lot of people over the years at Hydra’s direction and he cannot expect forgiveness from everyone, he especially cannot expect it from anyone in this pack, not when Abraham’s death was still so fresh in their minds. Fuck, he couldn’t forgive himself for that either. Bucky might have decided to take offense at that but then he caught a more nuanced whiff of the kid’s scent, and in addition to smelling like the most perfect summer day, there was an undertone of woodsy darkness that told him that Blondie was a werewolf. 

To say that he was immediately distracted by picturing the fun they could have together, all sorts of fun in various ways, wouldn’t be inaccurate. It took quite a bit of effort on his part to get his mind back on track. Thankfully, Blondie provided him with an opening.

“Sniffing around omegas who have already settled on who they want, it’s just disturbing. Not to mention the sense of entitlement one has to have to think that that’s okay.”

“Well, Blondie, you’re forgetting one important fact,” Bucky chided him more amused than offended. He couldn’t help it, the beta was _adorable_ all puffed up with righteous indignation on behalf of the omegas he believed Bucky was about to poach away from their chosen mates. As if Bucky would ever take on an unwilling partner or break up an already made match, he could be a cad but never that much of one. 

“Oh, and what could that possibly be,” the kid snorted, clearly not impressed at all by Bucky. He kind of loved that about this uppity brickhouse of a beta.

“I’m James Barnes, don’t you think that would persuade any omega in your pack - available or not - to give me a shot? Wouldn’t the political and social coup of having me officially tied down to your pack be considered enough appeal for someone to break their promised bonds? After all, I am a war hero, a living legend, and the first alpha Erskine ever turned. A catch like me would bring glory to your pack who wouldn’t want that on their arm?”

At that Blondie didn’t just bristle but visibly snarled, his fangs elongating dangerously in an impressively aggressive display. 

“If you think for one second that all anyone in this pack cares about is glory then you don’t know a damn thing about us. Notoriety and glory what a load of crock, whose fucking kool-aid have you been drinking? If you think that any omega in my pack is going to be taken in by nothing but a bit of flash then we would’ve formalized our alliance with Stark through a marriage years ago. Newsflash, there’s a reason why we didn’t. Showmanship with little to no substance isn’t our thing and if you’re still laboring under that misapprehension then you never really knew Abraham as well as you like to claim.”

“Hey, I resent that!” Stark himself shouted at them from somewhere in the crowd, a sharp reminder that they were among werewolves and their conversation wasn’t exactly private. “And I’d said it’s about 60/40 now as opposed to the 90/10 ratio of flash to substance I had been rocking ten years ago when I made that offer.”

“Can it Tony, tell it to someone who cares.” Blonde shot back, not bothering to break eye contact with Bucky.

“Pepper! Pep, Steve sassed me!”

“I heard him Tony, and you promised me that tonight you’d wear your big boy pants and deal with your own problems.”

“Rhodey! Honey Bear, did you _hear_ that!”

Blondie, aka Steve, simply raised an eyebrow at Bucky as the whole party was subjected to Stark’s exaggerated whining about he was always the butt of the joke and nobody understood the persecution he went through, being devastatingly handsome, a former playboy, billionaire, genius, philanthropist. Bucky nodded, the kid had made his point. That didn’t mean he still couldn’t try and rib him about it and was going to do just that until he caught the gleam in Steve’s eye that practically screamed _fuck around and find out_.

“Fair enough, Stark’s style does seem too flashy for the Erskine pack. But I shouldn’t be confused for Stark,” he couldn’t help but add that one last dig. Truthfully, it pleased him to discover that while everything else in the world had changed so drastically from what he was used to that Abraham’s core ethics had passed along to his pack. Abraham always saw the good in people, wanted them to be a good person and stay that way, to the best of their ability. Bucky might consider Clint a bit of a comedown in leadership for the once-proud pack but the fact that he clearly still maintained Abraham’s philosophy of choosing good men not perfect werewolves (or men) to join their pack earned his respect. 

Pierce had been far too concerned with perfection. He’d wanted the whole damn world remade in his perfect image of it, the same perfect image that Schmidt and Hydra had once tried to shape the world into back during the War. Everything uniformed, nothing individualized, and everyone worshiping at the boot leather of the Head of Hydra.

“Perhaps not, but you’re still far too high profile for our pack,” Steve snapped. To Bucky, it sounded like he was desperately trying to convince himself of that. There was a spark in his blue, blue eyes that told Bucky if he tried to make a move he wouldn’t necessarily be rejected out of hand.

_I like that you’re lonely  
Lonely like me  
I could be lonely with you_

**🌻~🌻~🐺~🌻~🌻**

_We had to work a bit more hard  
Only just to get a little bit less far  
We could laugh about it all tomorrow, couldn’t we?_

“Clint,” Natasha stated, sliding onto the armrest of the couch directly behind him then draping her arm behind his head. She looked like a modern-day portrait of one of Goya’s lounging women, only deadlier sprawled against the edge of Clint’s purple striped couch in her skin tight leather pants and Rolling Stone t-shirt. Without thinking about it Cling leaned back into the embrace of her body and settled there comfortably, not once considering how it might look to others. Those who knew Natasha only through her professional reputation as the Black Widow were probably aghast to see her openly cuddling another human being. Luckily for them, Nat couldn’t be bothered to give a damn about what they thought.

“Clint, would you like to tell me why it is you reek of Steve?”

“I convinced him that it would be a good idea to switch shirts with me right before the start of this little shindig,” Clint answered her tilting his head back even as she ran her fingers through his dirty blond hair and gave his scalp a quick scratch. 

“You convinced him? Or did you allow him to convince you,” she asked laughter hidden deep in her voice. In response, Clint gave her a saucy wink and she leaned over him to kiss the tip of his nose. A rumbling purr emitted from him at that gentle gesture. It was rare for Natasha to be so openly affectionate in front of so many people but since the majority of those gathered together tonight were mostly family and she was about to be free from S.H.I.E.L.D., she clearly felt comfortable enough to be free with her affections. And Clint wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth, at least not twice in one lifetime. 

Honestly, he was lucky, really, that Abraham didn’t believe in giving up when others saw lost causes. Good old dad always believed in the unlimited potential of everyone to be the best versions of themselves, it was something Clint had always admired about him even when he worried that eventually, he’d end up disappointing him. It was also that trait that Steve more than the rest of them had inherited from Abraham, probably because Sarah also believed in the goodness of others, and Clint also lived with the worry of disappointing his baby brother. That was his biggest fear in life, letting down the people he loved.

It weighed particularly hard on his mind since out of the four of them – Thor, Clint, Loki, and Steve the only officially named ‘heirs’ of Abraham Erskine the Alpha of Brooklyn – Steve was the last of them to remain unattached and he was an omega. Clint supposes that it was lucky really that when Sarah discovered Thor and Loki it was obvious to anyone with a sense of empathy that the two were each other’s mates. While it was rare for a werewolf to find his or her true mate at any age, for Thor to have discovered his when he was just sixteen, and Loki thirteen, at the time, was, simply, remarkable. It saved Clint from being in the precarious position of being responsible for two of his brothers finding a suitable mate – an old-fashioned notion that Clint could do without to be perfectly honest. Besides to expect either Steve or Loki to accept someone else’s choices for their future like that was ludicrous. Sarah Rogers did not raise meek boys in general, she especially did not raise her omega sons to be push-overs. But above all, she raised her children to know themselves and to stick to their guns despite the pressures of society and tradition. Abraham reinforced those teachings by giving them all the space to become who they wanted to be, he never forced any of them into any of the traditional roles dictated by their primary and secondary genders that many in society believed they were suitable for. Abraham, for all that he was born back in 1869, had never been a traditionalist.

The same could not be said of Thor’s father Odin Borson, an extremely fundamentalist Alpha of a traditional pack in Norway. That’s why Thor and Loki ended up mostly abandoned in New York City and how Sarah came to find them. Mostly abandoned because Thor’s mother, and Loki’s foster-mother, Frigga, stood up against her husband and did what she could to help them find a safe place to land. When Odin found out that Thor had been taken in by the Erskine pack, he made a move to take him back and Frigga blocked it. Since she was less of an obnoxious bore than her mate and could be relied upon to keep a steadier head the Supernatural Council agreed that the boys were safer where they were, away from Odin. Especially once they were provided the evidence of Odin’s physical abuse of both the boys, particularly his foster-son. Whatever Odin’s goal had been he certainly did not expect the result he had gotten – his Alpha powers stripped from him and given to his omega wife. The last Clint had heard of Borson he’d been trying to start a traditionalist commune somewhere in the Swiss Alps. _Good riddance to bad rubbish_. As for an heir to the Asgardian pack, Frigga named their beta daughter Hela who had shown far more interest in a position of authority than Thor ever had.

Clint was well aware of what the Council expected of him - they wanted him to serve up Steve on a silver platter to Barnes - and he wasn’t about to do that. But he couldn’t afford to be seen to be going against the Council, not right now, not when his leadership skills were under a microscope and Natasha was literally on the line. If Barnes, however, were the one to object to the match well then it was out of Clint’s hands. The key was getting Barnes to object in the first place. Knowing the Council’s plans for him as he did, Barnes would be far too cautious to approach any unknown omega out of concern of showing too much attention to one over another. Hence trading shirts with Steve for the party. Clint had made sure that he’d given Steve a shirt that he’d been wearing all day (he’d had a hoodie on over it to keep it free from stains) so that his own scent would overpower Steve’s and Barnes could mistake him for a beta at first blush. Should be just enough to draw Barnes in and then Steve could do the rest. Either his brother’s personality would entice Barnes or drive him away - Steve tended to have that effect on people. Especially when he was already riled up and who better to rile him up than Tony with who he had a weird sort of frienemy type relationship. Just let Stark feed Steve some partial misinformation about the Council’s plans and let the sparks fly.

“I know what you two are up too and it’s not going to work,” a voice singsonged coming from the back of the couch right before a face interjected itself between Clint and Natasha. Causing Clint to jolt forward and Natasha to lean back but not so much that she’d be in danger of losing her balance. 

“Gah! Wade,” Clint scolded as Natasha planted the palm of her hand on his forehead and pushed him backwards.

“Didn’t your mama ever teach you not to meddle,” Wade continued unperturbed. Twirling about and flinging himself over the back of the couch to land cross-legged with his chin in his hands, elbows planted on his knees. 

“Wade, go away.”

“Aw, sugar I like it when you’re mean to me,” and he made kissy faces at Natasha for good measure. “Seriously,” he pushed, actually managing to sound serious for a change and catching both of their undivided attention. “This is going to blow up in all of our faces and yous guys better be ready for the fallout.”

**🌻~🌻~🐺~🌻~🌻**

_There’s something tragic, but almost pure  
Think I could love you, but I’m not sure  
There’s something wholesome, there’s something sweet  
Tucked in your eyes that I’d love to meet…_

Bucky finally managed to convince Blondie – my name is _Steve_ , say it with me _Steve_ , not Blondie, not kid, but _Steve_ – that they’d have more fun using their tongues for something other than exchanging snappy comebacks. To be perfectly frank, Bucky didn’t think the kid would go for it but evidently, he’d pissed Steve off enough that he felt like he had something to prove.

In an act of either reckless bravery or blind stupidity, depending on how you looked at it, the kid grabbed him boldly by a belt loop and pulled him into a biting kiss that barely lasts long enough for Bucky to register what was happening. With a smug grin, Steve pushed Bucky back a step before turning around and using his grip on Bucky dragged him through the crowd towards the apartment’s front door. Not that Steve had to pull all that hard. To say that Bucky was eager to follow him would’ve been an understatement. 

God, he hoped Steve lived somewhere nearby, otherwise, they might have to make use of an alleyway or too. There was no way Bucky would be able to wait. While his mind was on other more pressing things, like memorizing the delectable curve of Blondie’s ass in those unflattering khaki’s and wondering what it would look like in more flattering pants, or more importantly nothing at all; he still remembered to search out Natalia.

Even though they were here to reestablish old alliances they were still technically in enemy territory and it would be stupid of him not to let his second know where he’d wandered off to just because he had wanted some action. Also, Natalia would never forgive him if he’d gotten himself killed because he was too distracted by some piece of ass. 

_But oh, what an ass!_

Steve had already stepped out into the hallway through the partially propped open front door and managed to drag Bucky nearly halfway through by the time he was able to catch Natasha’s eye. She was off in a secluded corner canoodling on a beaten up loveseat, curled up in Barton’s lap of all people, and chatting happily away with him and Wilson. He raised a questioning eyebrow at her for her choice in companionship and if she were the type to do so she would’ve stuck her tongue out at him in reply. Instead, she smirked at him then gave him a slight nod of acknowledgment to show she knew what he was up to.

With her tacit approval, Bucky happily allowed the kid to take him out into the apartment buildings hallway. He allowed the beta to lead him for a few steps down the hall almost to the staircase before Bucky decided to take charge and stopped meekly following along. He required some valuable intel and there was only one way to get it. Steve didn’t realize that he was no longer in step with him until the sudden jerk on his arm when he tried to move forward. When the kid turned around to give Bucky a quizzical look he was right there ready for him.

He was standing as close as he could possibly get to the kid so that when Steve turned his head they’re already face to face. It’s Bucky’s turn to take him by surprise with a kiss and it’s not some teasing little thing with a promise of more like the one Steve gave him earlier. 

Taking advantage of Steve’s surprise Bucky lays his flesh hand alongside Steve’s throat, curling his fingers along the back of his jaw to better control the angle of the kiss. He wrapped his sleeve clad metal arm around the impossibly slim curve of Steve’s waist. Then with a couple of deliberate steps backwards Bucky had the delightful beta caged up against the wall even as he caressed the kid’s plush lower lip with his tongue seeking access to what lay beyond. There was a dull thud as Steve’s head and shoulders hit resistance and with a soft sigh, the kid finally gave Bucky what he’d been looking for. While the younger man was so conveniently pinned he decided to prolong his explorations before ending them with a teasing nip at the beta’s stubborn, pouty, lower lip.

“How far is it to your place?” Bucky murmurs. Making sure to ask the question right against Steve’s panting mouth.

Bucky had hoped that that kiss would have been enough to encourage Steve to give him a prompt response but evidently, he hadn’t bargained on the seemingly depthless well of sass Blondie possessed. The kid leaned in and rubbed his cheek against the grain of Bucky’s permanent five o’clock shadow before leaving a few nipping bites along his jaw.

“It’s just a couple of floors down,” he finally answered when the trail of bite marks he’d laid led him to Bucky’s ear. Steve finished by nibbling a little on Bucky’s earlobe before he could take a step backward and pull the beta back towards the stairs.

“Better get going then you little tease,” Bucky chuckled with a familiar swat at the man’s delectable ass, “the sooner we get there, the sooner I can teach you a lesson.”

“Looking forward to it,” the kid shot back over his shoulder before taking to the stairs with a jaunty trot. Laughing silently to himself (to prevent the kid from getting any further smart ideas) Bucky eagerly followed. This was going to prove to be a night he wouldn’t soon forget. 

He couldn’t rightfully call what Steve lead him on a ‘chase’ - he’d been invited, and until his timely interruption actively dragged along, by the beta - but the way Steve scampered down the two flights of stairs with the occasional coy glance thrown over his shoulder felt like an omega trying to initiate a mating chase. A ridiculous thought, honestly, because the kid was a beta if Bucky ever saw one (and he was rarely - if ever! - wrong about these sort of things). Perhaps Blondie was trying to rev Bucky up more by imitating an omega even though it appeared to be unconsciously done.

It doesn’t take long for Steve to lead him down to his apartment door. Bucky briefly toys with the idea of barricading Steve up against the door for yet another makeout session but with a cute little hip check and a quick wink, Blondie popped the front door open before Bucky could step off of the last step. He disappeared into the dimly lit apartment, leaving the door open for Bucky to follow him.

That was a blatant invitation that Bucky wasn’t about to turn down any time soon.

He made his way into the beta’s apartment and silently closed the door behind him. The layout of this apartment was completely different from the one just two floors above, the only architectural features that they had in common were the large windows and an iron-wrought spiral staircase. It was narrower for one thing, and homier for another. Where the furniture upstairs had been a mixture of dumpster-dive finds in startling great condition and new, the furniture in this apartment was all well-loved and well-lived in. There was nothing sleek or modern about the place, everything was plush and cozy, the kind of atmosphere that encouraged one to find a book and curl up in a cozy seat reading until the gentle urge for a relaxing catnap overtook the enjoyment of whatever alternate reality danced before their eyes. There were baskets of blankets in woven baskets tucked into little out of the way corners all over the place. All-in-all, the place looked and felt more like an unmated omega’s nest than some beta’s bachelor pad.

Although, one question was finally answered for Bucky. This brownstone had to be the pack’s house. And therefore, it was safe of him to assume that everyone with an apartment in the building was a core member of the Erskine pack. Blondie here wasn’t just some pack member tapped to help his Alpha give off the impression of strength because he didn’t have anything better to do Friday night like he had pretended to be. He was something more. But what exactly Bucky wasn’t quite sure. Bucky’s musing is caught short by the sight of Steve’s purple button-down shirt tantalizing, carelessly, draped along the bottom steps of the spiral staircase. 

A pleased rumble vibrated its way out of Bucky’s throat even though a part of him was disappointed that he missed out on the opportunity to peel Steve out of the two sizes too small shirts himself. He had wanted to see if he could’ve gotten one or two of those straining buttons to burst across the room. His disappointment was short-lived, however, when his alpha hearing picked up the distinctive sound of skin rustling against sheets from the loft above followed by a half bitten off moan.

Seems like the beta wasn’t willing to wait and had gone ahead and gotten started without him. Bucky couldn’t really fault him for taking the initiative even though chances were it robbed Bucky of some of his favorite parts of foreplay. Of course, that depended on how far Steve had gotten on his own.

He moved back from the steps a little to try and get a lookup in the loft and found himself stymied by a wall of bookcases lined up against the railing placed to obviously give the sleeper more of a semblance of privacy. Another moan floated down from the loft and Bucky, honestly, didn’t need telling twice. He followed the breadcrumb trail of clothing up towards what he could only hope would be a naked and willing partner. He’d kicked his shoes off down at the bottom of the stairs before starting up them, not wanting to fuss with them later, and as he ascended the spiral staircase he’d set about loosening his belt and unzipping his jeans. Just to be prepared. Bucky was toying with the idea of taking off his Henley, literally toying with the hem of his shirt even as he rubbed his hand along his stomach in anticipation.

All thoughts flew out of his brain, however, the moment he reached the top of the stairs and saw what awaited him there.

Steve was indeed spread out naked on the bed just like Bucky had hoped he would be. But unlike how he had pictured, Steve wasn’t slowly jacking himself off as he waited for Bucky to join him. Instead, the tempting beta had one leg hitched up towards his chest and held in place by one hand while the other hand was busy playing with his hole. Bucky stood frozen in place watching mesmerized as Steve slowly stretched himself open with two of his own fingers. The kid must have used one of those synthetic omega lubes, and copious amounts of it at that, because not only did the distinct smell of omega arousal permeate the space but the kid’s hole glistened like an omega’s, wet with slick. Bucky knew just from looking at it that there would be little to no resistance. Honestly, though, that was more of a secondary concern for him. He was more taken in by how cute the stretched out pucker was and how sweetly Steve blushed under his hungry gaze. Bucky had a sense that the kid would be a full-body blusher and wasn’t disappointed to find out he was right.

“Whatcha gonna do? Just stand there and stare all night,” the kid asks him between purred breaths.

“Blondie, that sass of yours is going to land you in trouble,” Bucky warned him only to be given a smirking grin in return. “But I’ve got the feeling that you don’t mind a little bit of trouble.” He finished finally stopping into the space properly and removing his shirt at the same time.

Steve’s eyes widened appreciatively at the sight of Bucky shirtless. Roaming frantically over his bare torso uncertain as to what sight they wanted to take in first. Bucky felt his gaze like the light trace of fingers over his skin as the kid’s eyes danced from his metal shoulder to his chest, to down to his happy trail. By the time Steve finishes his perusal, Bucky’s knees have hit the end of the bed.

“Like what you see kid?” He teased the beta who had grown so distracted by Bucky’s approach he’d forgotten what he’d been doing himself.

Steve might have been distracted enough to stop playing with himself, but unfortunately for Bucky, he wasn’t distracted enough to stop sassing him. He rolled his eyes exaggeratedly in reply as if to say _no shit Sherlock_ and Bucky playfully bit at the tip of his nose before kissing down and around his jaw to stick his own nose right behind Steve’s ear. Bucky kissed the soft spot directly behind Steve’s ear before pulling the earlobe into his mouth and nibbling at it, causing Steve’s breath to hitch. Eventually, he let it go with one final tug to the tune of a doleful whine escaping his prey to murmur into the shell of Steve’s ear:

“What would you like me to show you, doll face?”

“Everything,” came the breathless answer.

Bucky leaned back to smile down at the man beneath him and this time he rewarded Steve’s frankness with a lingering kiss. He’d initially intended it to be just another little tease. But then Steve’s mouth had fallen open so obligingly when Bucky had run his tongue along the seam of his lips, with this sweet little mewl as Bucky slipped it inside to explore. At that point, the alpha just didn’t see any reason to cut things short. Especially not when Steve was sucking on his tongue so delightfully in such creative ways.

Eventually, however, they had to come up for air. Even werewolves needed to breathe. 

Reluctantly Bucky moved away from those plush lips to kiss his way down the stubborn jawline and the pale column of Steve’s neck. Bucky wanted the younger man absolutely covered from head to toe in his marks and in his scent. He didn’t want there to be any way for someone to mistaken what Steve had been up to and who exactly he’d been with while doing so. Pausing in the middle of sucking a hickey at the juncture where Steve’s throat met his shoulder Bucky took a moment to ponder the thought and the strange surge of possessiveness it brought out in him. Bucky had never cared that much about a one night stand before. Why the fuck would he now? And so early on in the evening too, it wasn’t like he knew much of Steve to be so attached, and furthermore, it wasn’t like he planned on getting to know Steve any better for there to be a reason to become so attached to the beta.

Bucky covered for his hesitation by sticking his nose in Steve’s neck and inhaling deeply then running it along a surprisingly sharply protruding collarbone for such a heavily muscled man. There, there was that smell again. The scent of a warm summer day, freshly mowed grass and blooming flowers, that had so enchanted him upstairs but mixed within was that of the tantalizing spice of omega arousal and the neutral base tone of a content beta. There was a scent reminiscent of hay, circus peanuts, and motor oil that he was picking up and was at odds with the sunshine and summer day comfort he already associated with Steve.

Confused Bucky continued to sniff around Steve’s neck and collar bones trying to suss out the contradictions in his scent, his scruff scraping up the delicate skin along Steve’s collar bones and leaving them pink and flush in its wake. He was jostled out of his small obsession by the body beneath him shaking slightly.

“Sorry, tickles,” Steve explained giggling a little.

Bucky hummed non-committedly in reply, thoroughly distracted by the sight of the other man’s, well to be perfectly frank, _tits_ , jiggling in the corner of his eye as Steve continued to giggle. “Does it now, well I suppose we can’t have that,” he commented, the epitome of insincere.

Moving on from the kids’ collar bones Bucky zeroed in on his tits making sure to mark up as much of the pale skin beneath him as he could on the way. The closer he got to his intended target, one perk nipple, the fewer giggles escaped Steve. Instead, they were replaced by these breathy sighs that were bound to drive Bucky crazy. As soon as he latched onto the little nub strong fingers tangled in the overgrown mess of his curls and Steve’s breathy sighs turned into a sharp gasp. Bucky reaches over with his left hand to twist and pinch Steve’s other nipple. The chest beneath him surged upwards as the kid’s back bowed in pleasure. A mewl escaped Steve then at the sensation and he tugged harder at Bucky’s hair causing him to growl around the nub in his mouth and graze it with a bit of elongated canine.

Bucky reluctantly moves off his nipple, ideally wondering if he could get the kid to come just from playing with them alone, to suck a mark into the underside of Steve’s tit before moving lower. He allowed his nose and chin to trail lightly along the clenching muscles of Steve’s abdomen, when he found the delightful cut of his narrow little waist Bucky couldn’t help but bite at the kids protruding hip bone. He stayed there long enough to guarantee that his mark would remain at least long enough for him to finish what he started here. Then, once he was done Bucky will be sure to go back and renew those marks so the kid would remember him later once he was gone.

He could feel Steve’s cock bobbing gently against his own collarbones as Bucky worked on sucking a mark into his hip and he couldn’t help but smile against the beta’s skin. He couldn’t wait to get his lips around that particular mouthful, but all in good time. Right now, he had a line of marks he wanted to leave leading to that beautiful cock. To that end, he started sucking startling bruises and bite marks up the length of one of Steve’s pale muscular thighs, bypassing his main goal with a swift, sweet little kiss to its tip then laying a series of marks down the length of his other thigh. Once Bucky was satisfied that he had marked Steve up enough, he reached for his cock and gave it a nice long lick up one side and down the other before taking it into his mouth and giving it a soft suckle.

Bucky flicked his gaze up to catch Steve’s half-lidded eyes staring intently down at him as he suckled gently at the tip of Steve’s cock, dipping his tongue into the slit. Steve’s eyes flashed neon blue underneath the fan of his too long to be legal eyelashes, and Bucky didn’t bother to hide his pleased smirk at the reaction. Some people liked to claim that it was impossible to smirk around a cock in one’s mouth, to that Bucky said they weren’t trying enough. He took Steve further into his mouth then holding eye contact for as long as possible before he needed to break it to focus on business. Bucky rang his tongue underneath the glans just as a bit of a tease before swiping up to the tip and then taking Steve in as far as he could in one fell swoop. The kid would have jackknifed off of the bed if Bucky hadn’t had the foresight to brace his metal arm across Steve’s hips to hold him down.

And that was just the opening salvo. Bucky sucked him off in earnest enjoying the feel and the weight of Steve in his mouth. He’d always enjoyed giving head as much as receiving, sometimes more so, despite what popular opinion would have one believe about alphas. Clearly, Steve didn’t expect him to be so into it, but it wasn’t stopping him from enjoying himself either. The kid kept trying to wriggle free of Bucky’s grip, kept trying to fruitlessly thrust his hips. Bucky could feel Steve drawing closer to the edge and he found that he was rubbing himself off against the sheets in sympathy. As much as he would’ve liked to swallow Steve down and keep the taste of him in his mouth, that wasn’t how Bucky pictured this encounter ending. No, he wanted _in_ Steve.

When he sensed that the kid was close, he gripped Steve’s cock tightly with his left hand and pulled his balls down from where they’d drawn up tight to his body with the other hand. Bucky pulled off of Steve’s cock with one last long lazy slurp and Blondie groaned. The sight of him sprawled out before Bucky was divine, his chest heaving as if he’d run a marathon and glistening with a slight sheen of sweat. His cock was straining and red from being denied any release, precum beading up at the tip and sliding down the side. It perfectly matched the shine of artificial slick leaking out from between his cheeks. 

Bucky zeroed in on the sight and before Steve could recover his breath, let alone his wits, he’d grabbed him with one hand under his knee and the other around a hip and flipped him over. Steve let out an adorable squeak of surprise at that, a squeak that turned into a relieved sigh the second Bucky placed a gentle kiss at the base of his spine. The expanse of his back was exquisite and the way he eagerly moved his limbs so that he was presenting for Bucky was gorgeous. He would’ve sworn that Steve was an omega from the way he so hungrily presented for him, but evidently, Steve was just a man who knew what he wanted and wasn’t afraid of going after it.

Speaking of going after what you wanted, Bucky parted Steve’s cheeks with his thumbs to expose his hole. It was positively drenched in slick, almost like a real omega. 

“God, baby, you’re _soaked_ ,” Bucky muttered, unable to keep the awe out of his voice. He licked a long stripe up from Steve’s taint up over his hole. Steve had done such a good job loosening up the muscle for him already that Bucky could slip his tongue inside with barely any resistance at all. Oh, he could have made a meal out of eating him out and the breathy little moans Steve was making as Bucky lapped away at his sloppy little hole definitely encouraged him. But that was for another time, Bucky’s own need was making itself pressingly known and he was getting impatient.

He played with Steve’s hole just a little bit longer, dipping in first one, then another finger giving it a final stretch. “Fuck, doll, your hole, such a greedy little thing,” Bucky commented mostly to himself watching mesmerized as it sucked in now three of his fingers with a wet _slurp_. “Better than any omega’s,” he continued leaning forward practically talking into the soft pucker before veering to the right and biting the enticing globe of Steve’s ass cheek hard to make him whine high in the back of his throat.

“Stop dicking around already and fuck me,” the beta demanded. Bucky growled at that and bit him again, this time he drew blood.

“Fucking, fuck,” Steve whined breathlessly, kicking back blindly with his foot and hitting Bucky in the knee. “Get in me now!”

“Don’t tempt me,” Bucky shot back just to be an ass, pulling his fingers out of Steve and dragging them down his inner things to collect some of the spilled slick from when Steve had opened himself up. When they were done he’d have to remember to ask the beta what and where did he find his brand of lube - Bucky hadn’t come across one that acted and smelled so authentically like omega slick before. It was intoxicating. Using the gathered lube in his hand he stroked himself off once or twice before lining the tip of his cock up with Steve’s hole. Slowly he pressed in so just the head was nestled inside. He paused there, giving Steve a chance to adjust to him, or maybe Bucky was giving himself a chance to adjust to the heat of being just that little bit inside of Steve.

Blondie - impatient thing that he was - was having none of that, with a snarl like grunt he shoved his hips backwards taking Bucky in nearly to the root. He would have if Bucky hadn’t reacted quickly enough and stopped him with a firm, bruising, grip on his hip with his metal hand.

“Easy, doll, there’s no rush and no need to hurt yourself.” Bucky cautioned him, trying to soothe him by rubbing his other hand up and down his spine.

“Says you,” the kid growled, “now hurry up and fuck me like you mean it or I’ll take care of things myself.” He demanded kicking back at Bucky again, “Probably have a toy that’ll do the job better than your knot would anyways,” he muttered into the pillow beneath his head just loud enough that Bucky knew he was meant to have overheard it. 

And well, he couldn’t have that. _Challenge, accepted._

Using his grip on Steve’s hips for leverage he pulled back and then slammed home, hip bones flush to Steve’s cheeks, then ground into him before pulling out and doing it again. He set up a punishing rhythm to the counterpoint of Steve’s breathy moans and groans. A steady pant of _uh, uh, UH, uh_ one of the sweetest tempos Bucky had ever heard. They got louder every third stroke as Bucky deliberately ground into his prostate after hitting it straight on. Steve already on his elbows slid down to his shoulders, stretching his arms out in front of him to brace himself against the headboard with both hands as Bucky proceeded to ride him up the bed and down into the mattress. He turned his head to the side and Bucky could now see how those sinfully long eyelashes were clumped together from unshed tears, the high flush on his cheekbones which had spread down his neck, across his shoulders, and down his back. For a moment Bucky regretted not doing this face on, he bet that that blush across Steve’s tits was a sight to behold.

His mouth was open in a soft circle, just slack and pink and tempting. Those sweet sounds passing between his plush lips without any conscious thought from Steve himself. After a moment, Steve’s tongue came out to lick his lips before he bit down on the bottom one and pulled it tight between his teeth before letting it go with a snap. Mesmerized by the sight, Bucky slipped his metal off of Steve’s hip and up along his side, stopping briefly to reach under him and tweaking a nipple causing him to buck back into Bucky’s next thrust (to both of their delight), then up to Steve’s pretty mouth. He tapped his pointer finger gently just under the bow of Steve’s bottom lip and he obediently opened his mouth further and snaked his tongue out to draw the digit in. He easily accepted another and suckled the two enthusiastically. Bucky felt his knot begin to catch on Steve’s rim and he would’ve sworn that he felt the man beneath him get slicker, even though he knew it was physically impossible for a beta.

“ _Oh_ , baby doll,” Bucky nearly crooned, “ _fuck_ you’re perfect, fucking made for me. Nobody’s ever taken me as well as you have.” At that, he pushed his half-blown knot past Steve’s rim and felt the man clench tight around him as he finally gave in to his own orgasm. Bucky couldn’t tell if it was the sensation of his knot stretching him further or the praise that sent Steve over the edge, and frankly, he didn’t give a damn either way.

Bucky continued to thrust shallowly, pulling out only so far enough to tug at Steve’s overstretched and sensitive rim, just a tease at what could happen if he were to force his almost fully formed knot to pop out. After a handful more of those shallow thrusts, he balanced his hips against Steve pert ass and with his right hand around his neck to keep the kid pinned Bucky pulled his left hand away from Steve’s mouth to reach down and tug on the man’s cock. Bucky was close to his own orgasm now and he was determined to make Steve come again right along with him.

Steve practically shouted when after a few relentless tugs of his oversensitive cock he came again. His channel locking even tighter down around Bucky and milking him for all he’s worth as his knot finally caught. Bucky continued to grind into Steve’s ass, causing his own orgasm, until with a snarling groan of his own he came. 

Sighing explosively he collapsed on top of the prone body beneath him causing Steve to groan a mild complete; “Too hot to cuddle.”

“Suck it up buttercup, we’re knotted together for at least the next thirty minutes if not longer,” Bucky snapped back taking in a sharp breath when Steve deliberately squeezed his trapped dick, “definitely longer if you keep that up, smartass.” He finished sounding more breathless than stern. 

Steve mumbled something into the pillow that Bucky couldn’t quite catch, it sounded more like gibberish than actual English.

“Wanna run that one by me again?”

“I’ll knot your ass, buttercup,” was the response. Before a big hand reached back to slap blindly at his bicep, “Ge’ off you jerk.”

Bucky couldn’t help it, he chuckled fondly at the nonsensical response, reaching up to kiss Steve on the back of the neck then shifting to settle them both more comfortably on their sides. “Stevie, I think your cum drunk.” 

He noticed how the kid tensed at the use of that particular nickname but didn’t pay much attention to it. Just ran a soothing hand up and down his exposed side and hooked a leg up over his knee before settling his nose in the crook of Steve’s neck. For someone who was just complaining about how he was too hot to cuddle, Steve certainly wasn’t making any move to put any distance between them. In fact, every once in a while Steve would deliberately press his ass back into the cradle of Bucky’s hips seeking stimulation against his prostate. After a minute Bucky had to give up on rubbing Steve’s side to hold his hips still. The man chuckled deeply at that, almost evilly, then after one more pointed hip wiggle - just to prove that he still could - he settled down.

“Punk,” Bucky informed him, nosing at his scent gland.

Steve grumbled something indistinct back at him that slurred into nothing as he drifted off into sleep. Bucky continued to nose at Steve’s neck as he himself drifted off into sleep not realizing that all he could smell now was the sweet softness of a very satisfied omega. Any beta scent that had clung to Steve had disappeared. 

Bucky, however, didn’t make this discovery until much later. Later, long after his knot had gone down and his now soft dick naturally fell out of Steve in their sleep. Bucky woke up as Steve shifted away from him with a sigh and the smell of Bucky’s cum mixed with slick reached his nose. Half awake he reached over and played with Steve’s still loose hole, lazily pushing his cum back into the still sleeping Steve, only stopping when Steve rolled out of his reach. Chuckling to himself, Bucky got up and pulled his boxers back on grateful that they had fallen asleep without turning off the lights.

He padded slightly down the staircase, as only a trained assassin could do, and picked up both his and Steve’s clothing as he came across each article. It was when he picked up the Mr. Owl t-shirt that he noticed the difference in scents. It was drenched in the distinct scent of hay, circus peanuts, and motor oil that he had come to associate with Barton over the last few days of preliminary negotiations. A scent that had nothing in common with Steve’s summer day and sunshine smell and it was also steeped in beta pheromones. The fact that one of Steve’s shirts smelled like one of his pack members wasn’t necessarily suspicious, that was life living in a werewolf pack, everyone’s scents blended together and shirts were often used interchangeably with no thought to who they truly belonged to. Bucky rationalized it as a coincidence and laid both sets of clothing across the back of one of the couches before heading towards the bathroom. He had half a thought of getting a wet washcloth and cleaning Steve up after taking care of his own need to use the facilities. 

It was as he was looking for a fresh washcloth that Bucky pulled open a drawer and came across a package of HeatpadsTM. He stared at the package of sanitary napkins blinking in thought - actually physically feeling himself trying to reboot - unable to process what exactly he was seeing. Needing further evidence Bucky opened the medicine cabinet above the sink and right in front he found a prescription for both Heat suppressants and birth control. Two prescriptions that a male beta would never have a need for. Bucky let the medicine cabinet door slip out of his fingers and swing shut under its own momentum and stormed out of the bathroom. His first instinct was to go pounding back up the stairs to the loft to shake Steve awake and demand what the fuck kind of sick games did he think he was playing. 

Instead, Bucky went with his second instinct, which was to throw his own clothes back on and leave. By the time he found his way out of the Erskine pack brownstone and down to the street he realized that Steve had never offered up his secondary gender. Bucky had just assumed that the blond was a beta and ran with it. He could hear Natalia in his head; _you know what happens when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me._

So much for staying away from the Erskine pack omegas.

**🌻~🌻~🐺~🌻~🌻**

_Life is not a love song that we like  
We’re all broken pieces floating by  
Life is not a love song, we can try  
To fix our broken pieces one at a time_

Steve woke up deliciously sore from a night well spent with surprisingly enjoyable company. He stretched languishingly in his bed and reached out expecting to encounter another body only to find nothing but the cold empty space of sheets that were once occupied. He cracked his eyes opened to double-check and, yes, he truly was alone in bed. Slowly Steve eased himself up so that he was sitting - aware that he smelled of stale sweat and other things - and rubbed the sleep out of the corner of his eyes listening for sounds of anyone else in his apartment. It was just as eerily silent and devoid of movement as it had been since they had gotten the hospice bed and moved ma up to the penthouse at the end of her illness.

Confused and hurt by Bucky’s absence and unexplained disappearing act he left the bed in favor of a shower figuring that he might as well get his day started. The sooner he got up and forgot about what happened the night before the better off he’d be. Who cares if it was the best sex he’s had in a long time. And so what if the alpha said the sweetest things to him Steve had ever heard. It was all done in the heat of the moment and alphas would say anything as long as they got to pop their knots. As long as Steve keeps that firmly in mind, he’ll be over what little feelings he may, or may not, have caught in no time.

It was a good theory and it worked fairly well. At least by the time, Steve realized in mid-February that the heat he was supposed to have had in January never showed up, and the reason behind its tardiness he pretty much hated Barnes again. And if a small part of him still felt differently, well, he had plenty of time to practice stomping those feelings like one would grapes.


	3. Finding His Way

_I gave my trust to the wrong man again  
The wrong man again  
Well it happens all the time  
It happens all the time_

There was something to be said for living in a state of denial. For one thing, it was quite comfortable, for another thing, well, living in denial meant Steve didn’t have to face the reality of the situation he suddenly found himself in. See, it wasn’t just a river in Egypt, denial happened to be a very well-worn state of being in his Bed-Stuy apartment, draped about his shoulders like a beloved blanket. To say Steve had been wallowing in it wouldn’t be overstating things at all.

He’d muscled his way through the first few signs of symptoms, figuring that if he ignored it, then it couldn’t affect him as much. Which was a completely asinine approach to the situation but that was all Steve had going for him right now, denial, denial, denial. Lately, that seemed to be the only way Steve could handle anything, by denying the real effect it was having on him. If he was being honest with himself he still wasn’t over Ma’s death or Dad’s for that matter. But Steve wasn’t in the habit of being honest with himself, at least not this year.

Therefore, when he started to show signs of easy fatigue he justified it as a sign that he was trying to do too much at once. Perhaps he should think about dropping one of his college courses or cut back at volunteering at the rec center, or maybe he’d just bitten off more than he could chew taking on that job with the private school. Clearly, he was juggling one too many things at the moment and something had to give, it had absolutely nothing to do with hormonal changes in his body as it started to grow a new life.

Absolutely nothing at all.

Alright, perhaps it had everything to do with the hormonal changes currently going on in his body. Turns out it was pretty difficult to just muscle his way through the morning sickness once it really hit him. One month into the (slowly becoming undeniable) fact that he was knocked-up and nausea hit him like a freight train. At the start of the second month, constant nausea turned into frequent vomiting, usually at the most inconvenient times.

That would explain why he found himself tucked halfway down a back alley propped up against one of the stinkiest dumpsters he’s recently had the misfortune of smelling - which did not help the situation - suffering the indignity of watching his lunch make a return trip. Half an hour and one block ago, Steve had really enjoyed stuffing his face with those chicken nuggets then chasing them down with an Oreo milkshake but right now, now, not so much. Now he fucking hated them and wished to never think of that particular combination again.

Yeah, and pigs had a better chance of flying before that happened.

Naturally, it would be during this particularly dignified moment that Natasha came across him. It was pure dumb luck that allowed her to find him there, still wiping away the evidence of his turbulent stomach off of his face with a scrunched up napkin.

Morning sickness was a bitch. First of all, it didn’t just confine itself to the early hours of the morning like the name implied and secondly, it had a tendency of sneaking up on him and catching him unawares. Half the time he was able to make it to a trash can or a bathroom if he was lucky, but he wasn’t always that lucky. _Morning sickness, what a joke, more like guerrilla warfare._

The one obstetrician he had been able to see at the Queens’ Family Planning clinic had told him that feeling this sick was normal for first-time pregnancies, but Steve doubted the woman had been telling him the truth. He’d actually lost some weight, he’d been sick so much. The doctor explained that as stress, due to the pregnancy and a lack of alpha pheromones to help his body settle into the changes it was experiencing. She was careful to specify, when explaining things to him, that any alpha would do, although the sire’s pheromones would, naturally, be ideal. Unfortunately, ideal or not, it wasn’t about to happen. Steve hadn’t seen hide nor hair of one James Buchanan Barnes since that party in mid-January. He had to hand it to the man, he certainly lived up to his reputation as a ghost. Here it was the beginning of March and Barnes was, once again, merely a rumor as far as Steve was concerned.

Clint had deliberately kept Steve out of the ongoing negotiations between what was left of the S.H.I.E.L.D pack, Stark and Erskine packs. Steve never could be counted on to keep a civil tongue around Tony and he didn’t much care for ‘uncle’ Nick’s spy games. All in all, he was more than happy to be left out of the loop. Even if part of him was bummed out that it meant he didn’t get to see Bucky again. A particularly disappointing thought back when Steve had still been harboring a crush on the alpha. A crush that had taken one burseingly frank heart to heart with Loki and then the scare of a missed heat for Steve to be rid of. The two separate home pregnancy tests he’d taken back in February after his heat failed to arrive were only the final nails in the coffee for that particular pipe dream.

Getting pregnant outside of one’s heat was rare for an omega, but not impossible. Steve just happened to be one of the lucky bastards who fell into the 10% of the population that rolled the dice and ended up with a bun in the oven. Now that he knew beyond a reasonable doubt that he was going to have a baby there was no way in hell that Steve would ever give it up. Hence his attempt to hide the pregnancy.

Guilty he avoided meeting Natasha’s gaze and tossed the used napkin into the dumpster before fishing a Listerine strip out of his front pocket to rid himself of the taste of bile. Nat wasn’t an idiot, she knew full well that Steve didn’t get ill anymore, not since Abraham had given him the Bite at eighteen. She also knew that Steve had slept with Bucky, not just because she’d seen them leave the party together but because Steve had told her. At the time there’d been no reason to hide it from her and she knew his habits, Steve wasn’t one to sleep around when he thought there was potential for a relationship. They might’ve only had the one ‘date’ if you’d wanted to call it that (it was more of a hate fuck really) but Steve thought that there could’ve been more. Unfortunately, he was the idiot who caught feelings while Barnes walked away scotch free.

Really, Natasha was more than capable of considering the facts of the situation and arriving at the accurate conclusion that he was knocked up. Steve wasn’t going to even bother trying to deny the accusation he saw in those sharp green eyes of hers.

Brazing this out wasn’t going to be an option for him, but that didn’t mean he had to roll over and accept the pity that he saw shadowing her expression. As if that was all he was good for now, pity. He wouldn’t have stomached that from anyone growing up back when he was just a sickly little matchstick of a boy, and he certainly wasn’t about to take it from Natasha now. He’d be damned if his best _friend_ was going to look upon him as if he was some fallen omega. Just another sad statistic of some poor foolish waif who ended up pregnant and mateless. As if an omega couldn’t raise a child on their own without a mate to help them. He suppressed the urge to roll his eyes at the thought.

Well, _fuck you_ very much for thinking it. How dare anyone think so little of him, or of anyone who found themselves in his position. Particularly Natasha. 

_Especially_ Natasha.

They’d bonded over being the babies of the family, over having overprotective adopted brothers, and the embarrassment of ill-timed first heats. All the general growing pains of adolescents. They shared each other's confidences and whenever they had a big decision to make in their lives they made a point of talking things over with each other first before acting on their choices. It was Steve that Natasha came to talk to when she decided to work for Fury and join the S.H.I.E.L.D pack to clear the red in her ledger. And Steve again that she spoke to when S.H.I.E.L.D started to fall apart shortly after Abraham’s murder and Natasha realized that with Pierce as the pack alpha, Nat hadn’t been doing good work at all. They were each other’s secret keepers and sin-eaters, there was hardly anything that one did not know about the other. 

It burned him to feel so thoroughly judged by her.

“You gonna tell him?” She asks him, interrupting his thoughts. And how like Natasha, to just bypass any niceties and aim straight at the heart of the matter. She would ask - no demand - that of him. Do not pass go, do not collect 200, but _do_ tell me how you feel and your plans.

“No.”

“He deserves to know, and he should hear it from you.”

“He does,” Steve answers her flatly, not bothering to deny the truth of her statement. Bucky _does_ deserve to know that he’s going to be a father, and Steve _should_ be the only one to tell him, “but he won't. Not now, not ever, and especially not from me.”

“Steve, you can’t just keep this from him.”

“Don’t see why not, my body, my choice,” Steve informs her, and having had his fill of what he already knows is going to be a pointlessly circular argument he stalks past her. She reaches out to grab a hold of his wrist, either to calm him down or to try and make him stay, it doesn’t matter, he brushes her off.

“Steve!”

“Keep out of it Natasha,” he yells at her over his shoulder well aware that telling her to back off was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Natasha had never been one to leave well enough alone, especially not when she thought she was acting in someone else’s best interest. But there was always room for hope, and Steve was willing to rely on that.

**🌻~🌻~🐺~🌻~🌻**

_If you don’t know where you’re going  
Don’t you wish that on me  
So you don’t know where you’re going  
Don’t you wish that on me_

It didn’t surprise him that Natasha was the one to find him out - accidentally or no, she had always been good at catching him out. Actually, Natasha had always been good at catching them all out - being trained as a spy from a young age in one of, if not _the_ most ruthless program that ever existed had left an impression on her, and old habits died hard if at all. (Especially if one turned them into one’s profession). It also didn’t hurt that Natasha was like his long-lost twin sister. She had this uncanny knack for knowing what Steve was going to do before he even knew himself half the time.

What did surprise him, however, was Natasha’s choice to rat him out to Clint. Their shared secrets had always been their secrets, Natasha had never once broken his confidence before. Yet part of Steve felt like he should’ve seen this coming. Especially since Natasha and Clint were moving forward with their bond now that S.H.I.E.L.D was dismantled, and Nat no longer had the specter of her red ledger being held over her head. The cynical part of him wondered if it was still too early to start blaming missing obvious things like Nat breaking his trust on having pregnancy brain or not. If ma was still around, she’d affectionately cuff him upside the head for such an idiotic suggestion. She’d tell him that it was out of concern for him, and not a desire to betray Steve, that motivated Natasha.

Natasha’s motives aside, it still didn’t change the white-hot flash of betrayal he felt when he realized that she had to have tipped Clint off. Steve had gotten home from teaching an art class down at the local Rec Center – like he did every Wednesday – to find Clint waiting for him. Pacing back ’n forth in the brownstone’s foray right by the mailboxes like a caged wolf.

“We need to talk,” he snapped at Steve as soon as he spotted him.

“Hello to you too Clint, how’s your day been, bro?”

“No snark Steve, this is serious, we need to talk and we’re going to talk now,” Clint practically growled grabbing at Steve’s elbow then hustling him into the recently repaired elevator. There was an edge of Alpha power to Clint’s voice that convinced Steve to go along with his demands. Steve followed him although he wouldn’t have been himself if he didn’t grumble about it while doing so. He tried wriggling his way out of Clint’s grip while in the elevator – just to see if he could – and his mild-mannered brother actually does growl at that, even flashing Alpha red eyes at him. Steve immediately settles down, deciding that it would probably be better for him to wait things out and discover why Clint was so upset before he tried pressing his luck again.

Although he really could’ve done without the indignity of being fogged marched from the elevator, down the hall, and into Clint’s apartment by his older brother and pack Alpha. Like he was some wayward pup. It reminded him far too much of being a kid and getting in trouble with Sarah for fighting, again. It immediately put him on edge and he put up a bit of a fight as Clint dragged him over to an easy chair before plopping him down in it. Vaguely he noticed both Thor and Loki looking rather grim as they stood hovering in the living room. Still, a brawler at heart Steve tried to stand right back up right away, only to have Clint push him back down. Invading Steve’s personal space to aggressively scent him.

“Fuck, _fuck!_ ” He exclaimed dragging the second word out as he moved away from Steve, grabbing two fistfuls of his own hair. “Aww, man, no. Of all the times for Natasha to be wrong, this would’ve been it.”

“Clint, what the hell is going on?” Steve asks, keeping an air of innocence about him. He hears Loki snort at that, clearly not believing the innocent routine. Steve wouldn’t believe it in his place either, as soon as he’d heard Natasha’s name, along with the scenting, Steve had a pretty solid idea of what was going on. The key, however, was to play dumb for as long as he could. Or, rather, for as long as they would allow him to.

“Cat’s outta the bag Steve, we all know you’re pregnant,” Clint growled.

Looks like Steve wasn’t going to get to play dumb at all. Well, there goes one strategy shot to hell.

“Oh, so that’s what’s going on,” Steve replies mildly. A tone that he knew would rub Clint the wrong way and only serve to infuriate him more. Perhaps Steve could irritate Clint into cutting things short. He rarely showed his temper but when Clint did, he was basically like the werewolf version of a pufferfish – all puffed up with hot air as if that’s a solution. It took him forever to calm back down – sometimes Steve just liked to poke him, it helped pass the time.

“Oh, _OH!_ ” Clint repeated his voice lowering into a deep growl as he continued to pace back ‘n forth in front of Steve flexing his hands trying not to pop his claws. Steve watched his brother’s agitation warily. There’s a chance that Steve might’ve underestimated exactly how pissed off his Alpha was. “How could you be so fucking stupid?!? You’re a smart guy but Christ sometimes you’re just such a dumbass. Do you have any idea what kind of danger you’ve gone and exposed the whole pack to just because you were horny and too busy to think about using some protection?”

“No, you don’t you have no fucking clue,” Clint went on before Steve could even take more than a breath. He shut his jaw with an audible click and continued to watch Clint warily – clearly, they’d reached the rhetorical question portion of the evening. “You let yourself get knocked up by Barnes and it looks like you’re trying to entrap him. Especially with the current power upheaval going on with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s implosion and Barnes coming up on top as the pack’s new Alpha – everyone’s trying to align themselves, wanting to get on his good side. Carrying his progeny and with who our father was – it looks like we’ve entrapped him like we’re trying to plan a coup!”

“A coup?” Steve couldn’t help but scoff at that idea, “C’mon Clint this isn’t Westeros and nobody’s playing the Game of Thrones. Besides, isn’t that exactly what you wanted, to spoil the Council’s plot to marry me off by making me an unsuitable omega? It’s just poetic justice that I’m carrying his kid.”

“For fucks sake, Steve!” Clint bellowed. He’d stopped his pacing to crowd into Steve’s personal space, eyes blazing alpha red. It was obvious that Clint’s lost all control of his temper – his features had shifted and his teeth were elongated, there was also a bit of spittle at the corner of his mouth. Steve knew he had to take things seriously now, but he just couldn’t bring himself to.

He bit his lower lip and rolled it over his teeth to keep himself from laughing. But he was a werewolf, not a saint, and more importantly, he was a younger brother. Which could very well explain his sudden urge to reach out and bonk Clint on the nose and acted upon it immediately, complete with sound effects:

“Boop!”

Clint startled violently at that, wrinkling his nose up comically and jerking away from Steve until he was at a more respectable distance and no longer mere inches away from snapping at the tip of Steve’s own nose. Bonking Clint on his nose also had the desired effect of diffusing the tension.

“You’re ridiculous,” Clint informed him, “absolutely ridiculous. Of all the boneheaded –”  
He cut himself off there and flopped back down on the dilapidated purple couch grabbing a throw pillow decorated with arrows and hugged it close to his chest, pouting visibly. Clint sighs expansively, rubbing at his eyes tiredly before he lowers his hand and stares balefully at Steve.

“You do realize that when it comes to a pregnancy scare it’s supposed to be me accidentally knocking up Nat – as if she’d ever let that happen – not you getting knocked up by a near stranger. No one would have pegged you as the unwed mother type. Not even Loki had money riding on that particular horse, and you know how he likes to cover all his bets.”

Steve favored Loki with a questioning brow and the Emissary had the gall to simply shrug his shoulders as if to say _“why bet on a goodie-two-shoes.”_

Steve loved his adopted brothers, dearly, but sometimes he hated them too. They liked to tease him and call him Mr. Rogers because he happened to remind them of the childhood icon. They assumed that Steve would never, _could_ never, do anything risky because it didn’t fit their image of him as the regeneration of the cardigan and khaki wearing preacher. Never mind all the evidence to the contrary that proved just how much of a street brawler Steve could be – he wasn’t the second coming of Mr. Rogers, he was his own damn person!

But he was also their little Stevie; Sarah’s only biological child and Abraham’s supposed favorite, and they were always going to treat him like their little baby brother who needed sheltering from the world. – Never mind the facts that dad never played favorites, ma basically adopted and raised them all as her own, or that Steve already knew plenty about the ugliness of the world. – Once a little brother, always a little brother and it was clear to Steve that Clint, Thor, and Loki all felt the need to protect him in their own ways.

He was fairly certain that the need to protect was about to come out as an extreme overreaction, particularly in Clint. Two seconds later his guess was proven correct when the other blond sighed into his pillow turned safety blanket and announced;

“House arrest. I have no choice but to put you on house arrest until we can figure out what to do next.”

“ _What!?_ Clint you can’t fucking be serious –”

“Oh I’m deadly fucking serious Steve,” Clint interrupted him snapping his name out around sharping canines. “We can’t afford a misstep right now. Natasha isn’t entirely out from underneath SHEILD’s thumb and honestly, I’m not sure Barnes is willing to give her up. Also, the stigma of having been a part of that pack while Pierce was the Alpha isn’t going to go away anytime soon, Natasha’s reputation is smeared for life because of that rat bastard. We don’t need this distraction, I don’t need it right now.

Barnes is freaking impossible to read and Tony grew up playing underneath conference tables listening to negotiation techniques of various wall street types who don’t understand the word no. Whereas I’m just an ex-carnie with a GED here, cut me some slack would ya, please. This is quite literally the absolute last thing I want to deal with.”

“Look, I’m sorry things are so stressful for you, but you just can’t treat me like I’m some wayward teen.” Steve tried to plead his case trying hard to remain as calm as he could. If he lost his temper now, he’d just be proving Clint right.

“Well, I’m the Alpha now, and I damn well _will_ ,” Clint snarled. “Especially when you’re insisting on acting like one,” he added in a more level tone.

“Clint’s that’s not –”

“Fair? Tough shit Steve, I don’t care to hear it. Frankly, I can’t even bring myself to look at you anymore.” He finished sinking further into the couch and hiding behind the pillow. Clint was in a full-on sulk right now yet had the gall to accuse Steve of acting like a teen. “Thor and Loki are going to escort you down to your apartment and you are going to stay put until we can come up with a better plan.”

“This is such an overreaction, Clint! It’s absolutely _asinine_ ,” Steve sneered at his brother, he couldn’t think of Clint as his Alpha when he was acting so stupid. “Besides, I’m not even sure if I’m going to keep the baby,” Steve exclaimed, jumping up from his chair. Now he was the one fighting the urge to pace about the room and closing his hands into fists to keep himself from popping a claw and ripping something into shreds; something or someone.

His sudden outburst took even himself by surprise. Steve had thought, briefly, about terminating the pregnancy when he’d first learned about it, but that was eight weeks ago and he’d since changed his mind. Truthfully, abortion was never going to be a viable option for him, not when he already felt connected to the new life growing within him. Steve didn’t need any help raising his baby. He could, he would, do this all on his own, just like ma had.

“Well, nice to know that’s one option available to us,” Loki commented coldly, finally speaking up. Steve had hoped that the other omega would be on his side, but Loki had always been contrary.

“Loki!” Thor admonished him.

“We’re all thinking it, I just happened to say it.” The brunet justified his comments.  
“It didn’t need to be said at all.”

“Of course, it did Thor,” Loki countered giving the large alpha a nasty look, “he has some ridiculous pie in the sky notion about –”

“Enough. Loki, Thor, if you both could please take Steve back to his apartment now.” Clint ordered the bickering pair, using the rumble of his Alpha power again. The bonded alpha and omega pair came to a heal sharply at his words.

“Come along Steve,” Thor urges him, grabbing him gently by the elbow. Numbly Steve follows his brother’s directions the fight drained entirely out of him.

The three of them are nearly halfway to the door when Clint final orders; “Thor, I want you to make sure he stays put until I say otherwise.”

Thor nods in acknowledgment of his Alpha’s orders then ushers Steve out the door, Loki hot on their heels.

**🌻~🌻~🐺~🌻~🌻**

_Quit wasting my time  
Telling me what you think is right  
You could spend your whole life  
Going on and on with what you call news_

Steve wasn’t going to put up with being cooped up like some dirty little secret. They should’ve all known him better than that, but since his brothers had decided to take leave of their collective senses and treat him like some Maid Marian type character to be kept away from the dastardly and devastatingly dashing Robin Hood – okay, so it’s possible that that analogy got away from him. Still, the point still stands, Steve wasn’t the type to be coddled or treated like a wilting flower. He had the old scars on his knuckles to prove that, plus a bump in his nose as the constant reminder from the couple of times he broke it during a back alley brawl and failed to have it set properly.

Despite that Clint wanted to act like Steve was some sort of shrinking violet of an omega. And for whatever reason Thor and Loki were backing his play. Well if that was the way they were going to play things then Steve would humor them just long enough to lull them into a false sense of security. Once they were convinced that he would toe the company line that’s when Steve would make his move. He already had a go-bag packed and tucked away in his bedroom closet just waiting for the opportunity to leave.

In the meantime, he had Thor to contend with on a daily basis. Clint had given Thor the job of watching Steve’s door like some sort of hyperactive guard dog, but it would’ve been better if he’d picked Loki or Natasha instead. Hell, even Wade would’ve made a better guard dog than Thor. But Clint went with his trusty second and while Thor, an alpha who stood at 6’5” and was bulk like a truck, could be intimidating to and appropriately distrusting of outsiders, was basically a large fluffy golden retriever when it came to fellow pack members. For a while, Steve wondered what Clint was doing without his second, especially since the Alpha had thought he’d endangered their pack by sleeping with Barnes and things were supposedly tense right now. Then he remembered that with Natasha back and officially done with S.H.I.E.L.D., she could easily stand in for Thor and help Clint navigate whatever troubled waters Clint thought Steve had landed them in.

Though, truth be told, anyone posted at his door could’ve been easily bribed. Steve had grown up at his mother’s hip after all, and while he wasn’t the cook ma had been, he was one hell of a home baker. He knew all of his pack member’s favorite treats by heart and always had supplies on hand. Thor, giant marshmallow that he was, was usually the first to crack. It only took Steve two days of good behavior and baking some of Thor’s favorites, rye bread, peanut butter cookie brownies, to get Thor to abandon his post. By the third day of his vigil, Thor had taken to sitting on the plush blue corduroy couch they had all helped Sarah pick out after one particularly overly enthusiastic sleepover had finally seen her beloved paisley couch bite the dust – turns out that melted popcorn butter and chocolate chip ice cream, along with chocolate sauce, wasn’t a good decorative addition to the yellow and green upholstery. A well-stocked plate of treats at hand as well as a hefty glass of milk.

After bribing – ahem – providing Thor with a well-earned snack it wasn’t hard for Steve to convince the older man to hang out with him inside the apartment. Sometimes it really paid to be the baby brother and an omega to boot, Steve knew how to work both angles to his advantage when he felt like it. By the end of his third week of being ‘grounded’ – and how embarrassing was that to be twenty-five and grounded by his big brother and Alpha – he had Thor completely convinced that there were no hard feelings about the whole ‘misunderstanding’.

Thor remarked upon it himself one sunny afternoon while they were both sprawled out on the faded blue corduroy couch; a blanket across Steve’s lap and his feet up in Thor’s while the alpha had his up on the coffee table and a plate of cookies propped up by Steve’s ankles. Steve’s baby bump was just beginning to show and he could feel Thor’s curious gaze fluttering over it every once and a while as they sat there – Steve reading a baby book and Thor watching the television as he made his way through that day’s batch of cookies.

“Pregnancy has mellowed you out considerably Steven,” he rumbled almost as if he was musing out loud to himself and didn’t expect a response. Steve lowered his book far enough to meet Thor’s assessing gaze over the top of the pages. “I had expected you to put up more of a fuss about Clint’s orders.”

“Maybe I’ve just finally learned to pick my battles and it has nothing to do with the pregnancy at all,” Steve suggested. Thor gave him an assessing look before breaking out into a soft grin and chuckling a little.

“I’m sorry, but your idea of picking your battles is to take on all of them at once.”  
“Alright, you got me there,” Steve admitted good-naturedly. Thor’s comment wasn’t exactly a lie, he did have a habit of biting off more than he could chew. He had a reputation for being a hothead when he was a kid, one that had only grown when puberty hit, and that promised growth spurt never happened. It’s possible that being both sickly and scrawny for most of his life had left Steve with a bit of a chip on his shoulder and something to prove. He could often be found standing up for the little guy even though society thought that as an omega, and a ‘delicate’ one to boot, Steve should’ve left the standing up to someone else. He had a long talk with dad and ma about his headstrong ways before Abraham would even consider giving Steve the Bite. Neither one of them wanted to see him become healthy (they were positive that the Bite would cure his long list of ailments, but no one could’ve predicted just how much it would cure him, the sudden growth spurt from 5’4'' and 98lbs to 6’2” and 240lbs was certainly unexpected) and suddenly lose any and all sense of who he was. The last thing dad always asked of anyone who was about to receive the Bite from him was that they would “Stay who you are. Not a perfect werewolf. But a good person.”

Abraham had never wanted anyone to lose respect for the power inherent in becoming a werewolf, he insisted that they remembered the value of that strength and acted with compassion because of it. The way Steve tended to charge headfirst into a fight had worried dad that he’d take advantage of his newfound abilities. Steve remembered that conversation vividly, it began with Abraham reciting the last five back alley scuffles that Steve had started and one of the other boys had helped him finish and the reasons behind them then ended with the following exchange:  
_“Do you want to hurt people, Steven?” “Is this a test?” “Yes.”  
“I don’t want to hurt anyone, dad. I just don’t like bullies; I don’t care who they are, where they’re from if they’re alpha, beta or omega, human or ‘wolf.” _  
For some reason, that answer had made Abraham smile. It was after that conversation that he’d bitten Steve and given him the gift of becoming a werewolf. For a seventeen-year-old freshly graduated from high school, it made a great graduation present. They’d waited until his eighteenth birthday for Abraham to take Steve to the Retreat, the place he brought all newly bitten ‘wolves to give them time to gain control of their shift outside of the distractions of the city, for Steve to finally receive the Bite.__

__“Still, Steven,” Thor persisted, bringing Steve out of his reminiscences and back to the present. “You cannot deny that impending motherhood has changed you.”_ _

__“I suppose you’re right Thor,” he answered noncommittedly. Steve never thought motherhood changed ma any, but then again how would he know? Ma had always been ma to him and she would always be larger than life in his eyes, a fierce omega who wasn’t easily intimidated by anything. He might have gained the height and stature of his da after being turned into a werewolf but his attitude and ideals were one hundred percent, Sarah. She never backed down from a fight in her life. Steve just happened to put his on spin things._ _

__“It is nice to see you embracing the gentler side of your nature brother,” Thor continued rather formally. Steve hid the wince the sting of those words caused and swallowed his initial hurt reaction. He knew the alpha hadn’t meant any harm by them, in fact, just the opposite he’d meant to complement Steve. But he also knew Thor well enough to know his nervous ticks, and the golden-haired man always fell back on the stifling formality of his birth parents when he was uncomfortable._ _

__“Thor, because I love you, I’m going to ask you to take a moment and think about how Loki would react if you were ever to say anything like that to him.”_ _

__“Kind of put my foot in it, didn’t I?” Thor asked sheepishly, biting the corner of his mouth in a half-grin._ _

__“Just a little bit,” Steve informed him, jokingly holding his pointer finger and thumb apart by a small margin. “I mean, I’m not saying that Loki wouldn’t have your guts for garters then make you wear them if he ever overheard a statement like that, but then again, I’m also _not_ not sayin’ it.”_ _

__Thor regarded him with a quizzical brow for a few moments before his expression cleared and returned to its usual easy-going sunny disposition. “He totally would, wouldn’t he?” Thor remarked chuckling delightfully at the thought. The man was so in love with his mate that it was almost sickening._ _

__Steve wasn’t jealous at all, not in the least. (He was painfully jealous, more so now than ever before)._ _

__“It would be the very least of your troubles pal,” Steve agreed with a chuckle of his own, weak though it was. He coughed to cover it up before continuing; “But honestly Thor, I’m not just suddenly embracing my ‘gentler nature’ as you put it. I’ve always accepted that part of myself, I just never let it define who I am. Tell me where it’s written that I have to live up to the stereotypes about omegas, you can’t because it isn’t, just like there’s no arbitrary rule that says you have to follow all the alpha stereotypes. Thor, do you really think that way? Would you consider ma less of an omega because she didn’t stay barefoot in the kitchen? C’mon, there’s no way that you do. ‘Sides we all know that you’re the one who keeps yours and Loki’s den clean – Loki only ever bothers to clean up his workspace and nothing else. He’s no house omega after all, just like myself, and just like ma.”_ _

__“I apologize, Steve, I’ve done you a grave disservice.” The sincerity in Thor’s voice made Steve want to punch him in the throat. He couldn’t handle Thor (or anyone else) deciding to come to their senses and start treating Steve like an equal again, not some errant teenager. Not right now, not when he was planning on leaving the Erskine pack. It had been a difficult enough decision for him to arrive at in the first place and the only way Steve was positive he’d be able to go through with it was to do it out of spite._ _

__Steve clenched his jaw and resisted the urge to launch himself across the couch at the alpha. He wanted nothing more than to grab up a couple of fistfuls of those golden locks and shake him then shout – _“see Thor! do you see me now? pregnancy hasn’t mellowed me at all! I’m not the good man youze so desperately want me to be because a good man wouldn’t have fucked the person who killed their Alpha in the first place. but I did! I did and I’m keeping the pup. and I don’t give a rat’s hairy asshole about the trouble its cost everyone”_ – but Steve does none of it. He just sits there, like a bump on a log, and listens as his brother apologizes for the pack being so harsh on Steve for an honest mistake._ _

__That was the moment when Steve decided that he had to make his escape that very night. He was fourteen weeks pregnant and counting – if he waited any longer then he wouldn’t be able to get anywhere on his own without help. The kicker was that there was no one that he could trust to help him right now. Well, maybe Wade, but then he couldn’t trust Wade to keep a secret long enough to save a life, so that option went out the window._ _

__The rest of the day passed by tortuously slow for Steve, he couldn’t regain a sense of equilibrium after that conversation. It was all he could do not to give away how anxious he felt. Now that he had decided that he was leaving that night he wanted to go immediately. It would fucking suck if he undid all of his good work of luring them into a false sense of security by being too damn anxious at the eleventh hour._ _

__He caught a lucky break when Thor was sent a text – judging by the ring tone it was from Loki – and after reading it excused himself with a faint blush high on his cheekbones. Steve let him leave without commenting on his obvious distraction just thanked Thor for his company and happily sent him on his way. Steve stayed seated curled up on the couch for a while longer in case Thor came back or anyone else came by then he got up and checked the peephole in his front door. They’re just down the hallway he caught the telltale shift of movement._ _

__Soon enough he spotted Luis setting a chair up by the corner banister and the Lang’s tumbling out of their apartment with their arms full of ten colorful wooden pins and a couple of bowling balls. Hallway bowling was pretty much a regular occurrence in the old brownstone that under normal circumstances Steve wouldn’t think twice about it. Hell, he’d probably go out there and join them, teaming up with Cassie against Luis and Scott, egging Luis into telling a convoluted and entertaining story hoping that it would distract Scott from the game long enough for him and Cassie to pull ahead. It was really quite clever of Clint, using a well-loved pastime as cover for keeping an eye on him without looking like he was deliberately keeping an eye on Steve. Sure enough, his brother came clodhopping down the stairs to lounge lazily along the banister just behind Luis and strike up a conversation. Steve could just faintly hear what they were discussing through the doorway. He stood there a while longer just watching to see if anyone else might join them. It’s possible that he also felt a little pang of loneliness while watching them. Other than Thor, no one else from the pack had really interacted with him lately, he’d become a bit of a piranha and Steve didn’t know if that was just a coincidence or by design. At one point he would’ve sworn that Clint looked up from his conversation with Luis and directly at Steve spying on them all through the peephole._ _

__With a silent snarl, Steve spun away from his front door. He had to stick to his routine so that his escape could go off without a hitch, not get caught up in whatever various pack members were doing. He stopped off to his kitchen and fixed himself a sandwich to hold him over and because he’s been craving them lately he finished off the last few pickles left in the open jar in his fridge. Steve made himself a mental note to grab a jar when he topped off his go bag with food. After eating he went upstairs to take a shower, sticking to his normal routine but also being sure to use the new products he’d ordered and picked up before his enforced confinement. Usually, when Steve picked products with an odor to them he tended to pick smells that reminded him of ma, or according to Clint, complemented his own natural scent, smells like sage or eucalyptus. This time he deliberately picked smells like bergamot and jasmine, scents that his family would be more likely to associate with either Natasha, Wade, or Hope. The hope was that it would be just enough of a mislead to help throw anybody off his trail if they decided to shift and sniff him out._ _

__Once out of the shower he dressed in dark clothing that would allow him to blend into the shadows and a crowd without looking like he was deliberately trying to blend in. One of the upsides about the pack owning an entire brownstone was the shared laundry in the basement. That made it so easy for Steve to pilfer clothing from the other pack members that both fitted his changing body and were different from his standard wardrobe. He simply slipped a couple of choice pieces in with his own laundry while he was doing it - that was one activity he was still allowed out of his apartment for since he was still confined to the brownstone. No one questioned the sharing of clothing because that was just a matter of course within a tight-knit werewolf pack. He was careful to spread out his pilfering through a few loads and to not be obvious about whose laundry he was targeting and to actually wear some of his misbegotten goods. It actually did Steve a world of good wearing his pack members’ clothes and surrounding himself with their scents, especially since no one was stopping by, waltzing in and bugging him to hang out anymore. Wolves were not meant to be solitary creatures and that went double for werewolves, and triply for pregnant werewolves. The moratorium that Steve’s apartment was under had been hellish on his emotional health. He wasn’t a social butterfly by any means but he did enjoy having company every now and then._ _

__Thor would give him a particularly guilty look whenever he caught Steve burying his nose in somebody else’s pilfered t-shirt or sweater just to catch their scent._ _

__Anyway, once out of the shower he kitted himself out in an oversized navy zip-up hoodie that had once belong to Matt and had somehow migrated over from the loft in Hell’s Kitchen to the brownstone and a pair of dark washed maternity jeans that were currently being used by Mack but wouldn’t be missed by him either – Mack was known for being a bit of a clotheshorse something that Fitz Simmons loved to indulge. Steve had been shocked by how big of a difference a pair of pants with a stretchy waistband made for a growing baby bump. Wearing other pack members’ clothing, using different scented products might seem like a couple of silly little precautions, but it made Steve feel better to take them._ _

__After getting dressed he collected his go bag and then did a quick raid of the kitchen, making sure to grab the last jar of pickles, as well as a couple of packets of saltines. It was a bit like playing Tetris to fit them in amongst the other food and clothes he already had packed but Steve managed it in the end. Clint might have had the bright idea to keep him confined to his apartment but had forgotten all about the fire escape. The access to it was through the front room window and Steve jostled it open under the cover of Luis and Scott shouting in jubilation at what sounded like a strikeout in the hallway._ _

__Steve shut the window behind him then made his way – as silently as he could – down the fire escape. He was banking on two essential facts to help him make his escape unseen. 1) it was dinnertime and hopefully, the owners living in the few occupied apartments below him were too busy cooking or eating to be bothered with watching the fire escape for potential fugitives, and 2) the rest of the apartments that had access to his fire escape were routinely kept empty. Steve’s apartment was on the fifth floor of a six-floor walkup, and only the apartment on the fourth floor was lived in full time, it belonged to Wade, the one on the third floor was occupied on and off by Kate. Kate Bishop was a young beta who felt neglected at home by her own parents –really, in a lot of ways she wanted for nothing, at least when it came to material goods, but then again, money wasn’t the be-all, end-all – and had inexplicably grown attached to Clint. She’d even taken to calling herself Hawkeye after Clint’s S.H.I.E.L.D call sign and it turns out she had just as much skill with a bow and arrow as the OG Hawkeye._ _

__Her random appearance didn’t really bother the pack as a whole – it was something they were known for. Abraham had always had a soft spot for those in need and never hesitated to take anyone in who pleaded their case before him or he happened across and that he could tell were in desperate need. That’s why both the third and second floors of apartments were generally kept empty. Sometimes the pack was large enough that they were filled up with pack members, family, but those who willingly joined were always allowed to leave or to find their own place. That’s why a branch of the pack was living off in Hell’s Kitchen right now, the main brownstone had become too much for them so Foggy, Matt, Karen, Luke, Jess and the rest went to find their own space. The first-floor apartments were left standing empty for visitors from other packs._ _

__Steve hadn’t heard anything about Kate being around lately from Thor so he took the chance that she wasn’t. He just made sure to tread extra carefully when he passed by her living kitchen window with the gauzy purple curtains floating eerily in the faint breeze caused by the window she habitually left cracked open. Soon enough he reached the bottom platform of the fire escape and was even with the empty second floor, all that stood between him and freedom was one rusty old ladder and a small drop to the asphalt below. He turned around so that his back faced the street as he climbed down the ladder then when he reached the end he placed his hands on the second to last rung and extended his body vertically as far as he could before letting go. He felt the jarring of his landing through his entire frame and automatically his right arm snapped forward to curve around his baby bump as if to shield it._ _

__“I’m not so sure that jumping off of fire escapes is a smart thing to do for someone in your condition,” Natasha’s familiar smoky voice teased him._ _

__“Nat, we have to stop meeting like this, people will talk.” Steve greeted her turning around to find her blocking the opening to the alleyway. Alright, blocking might be a bit of an exaggeration, she was simply leaning against the worn red brickwork of the opposite building to the family brownstone. But the intentions were the same!_ _

__Physically, Nat couldn’t block the entire entrance, it was just impossible for someone of her stature. But she might as well have been for the immediate effect it had on Steve – he had frozen in place the minute he heard her voice. Steve wasn’t about to chance his luck trying to pass her before Natasha was good and ready to let him go and she damn well knew it. Just like she also knew that he knew, she wouldn’t attack him but he still couldn’t take that risk._ _

__Steve and Natasha had first bonded over three things they had in common when Clint decided to bring her to Erskine pack instead of S.H.I.E.L.D (after keeping her alive instead of eliminating the infamous Black Widow as had been his orders) a) their scrappy natures b) a shared diminutive stature – at the time Steve still barely topped out at 5’4” – and c) the fact that they were both omegas. They could pretty much read each other like a book now. And Steve knew that if he made a single aggressive move towards her then Nat wouldn’t hesitate to take him down, under normal circumstances, just like she knew that the only reason he hadn’t tried to barrel his way out of this ridiculous Rapunzel situation he’d found himself in, like a bull in a china shop, was out of an abundance of precaution for the new life growing in his belly._ _

__They were officially stalemated. Nothing was going to change until one of them decided to be the bigger person and take a step back. Honestly, Steve didn’t see that happening anytime soon. They were both too stubborn to back down from anything. Too stubborn for their own good ma used to say._ _

__Natasha snorted at his attempt at a joke, doing him the courtesy of allowing him to see her amusement. For a moment Steve felt a sharp flash of relief. And in the next, he did his best to squash it and keep it from showing on his face. While he didn’t doubt that she was genuinely amused, Steve couldn’t help but wonder if she only allowed it to show as a ploy to make him lower his guard. Something about what he was thinking must have shown in his expression despite his best efforts because he saw a brief flash of hurt in her brilliant green eyes before Natasha could lock it away. Steve opened his mouth to apologize – he hadn’t meant to hurt her, he only wanted to keep himself from getting hurt – only to be cut off by Natasha stepping away from the wall she’d been pretending to hold up, both hands held out in a silencing gesture._ _

__“No worries Steve,” she addressed his silent concerns first sounding sincere and he believed her because she didn’t bother to hide behind a mask just then, “I just wanted to reiterate, before you leave, that I think you should tell him. Also, I wanted to apologize for going behind your back like I did, telling Clint and all, that wasn’t right.”_ _

__Steve hung his head and rubbed at the back of his neck, hunching his shoulders in to try and hide his height. He always felt like that little kid from Flatbush whenever Natasha apologized to him – it reminded him of how Natasha had always seen them as equals, even when she was a freshly recruited Russian spy, new to America. Steve was the first person in her new life she ever bothered to apologize to, who she saw as worthy of that respect, before Clint, before Sarah, before Abraham, she saw Steve. Back when he thought that there was nothing special about him at all, Natasha saw someone worthy of respect._ _

__That’s why her spilling the beans about his pregnancy to Clint had stung so deeply; it had felt like a betrayal of more than just a confidence Steve had shared with her._ _

__“I kinda understand why you did it,” Steve replied, offering her a bit of an olive branch. “Suppose you wanted to force my hand there, make me talk to Bucky about everything. Might’ve worked too, if not for Clint’s overreaction. Didn’t count on that one now, did ya?”_ _

__She gave him a rueful smile at that; “Who would’ve thought he’d be the type to go all mama wolf on you? To be honest I half expected him to want to challenge James once I told him then have to talk him out of making such a stupid mistake – instead, he went all medieval on us in an entirely different way than what I predicted.”_ _

__“You’re telling me that Clint locking me up in the highest tower like some sort of damsel in distress wasn’t on your bingo card? For shame Natasha!” Steve teased her, his heart half in it, “At least he still took James to the cleaners at the negotiation table, though.”_ _

__“Oh? And how do you know about that,” Natasha asked arching her eyebrow and trying to sound coy. Steve just gave her a flat unimpressed look that caused Natasha to tip her head back and let out a silvery peal of laughter, like wind chimes dancing through the air. “Thor told you.”_ _

__“Spilled his guts is more like it,” Steve confirmed with a wicked little grin, “it's amazing how agreeable that man is after you feed him a whole tray and a half of his favorite brownies – he’ll tell you pretty much anything without thinking twice about it and he’s never heard of TMI. The things I now know about him and Loki would make your toes curl.”_ _

__“Oh my god, _Steve!_ ” She exclaimed, continuing to giggle and Steve finally exhaled a small sigh of relief, relaxing his guard. If Natasha was willing to act scandalized by some harmless gossip, then her heart wasn’t really in trying to stop him._ _

__“What?” He asked pretending confusion, “There’s no harm in passing things along, Thor knows damn well what he’s doing, and he didn’t tell me anything that he didn’t _want_ me to know. Regarding himself and Loki or about Clint’s negotiation tactics.”_ _

__“Uh, I hadn’t considered that.”_ _

__“C’mon, Nat you know as well as I that people look at Thor see a big, blonde, and muscly alpha and automatically think he’s a dolt; just like they look at me – see big, blonde, omega and assume I’m a bimbo. We’re all adept at turning other’s assumptions against them in our own ways. Is it really such a stretch to believe that Thor’s capable of the same.”_ _

__“Oh, I know, it’s just he – like you – can be so fucking sincere that it’s easy to forget what little shits you really are.”_ _

__“Call it a family trait, you’re not immune to it yourself Nat.”_ _

__She shrugs at that and Steve can feel the mood shift between them again, from levity back to serious in the breadth of a heartbeat. He fought the urge to hold his breath – here was going to be an ultimatum that he couldn’t allow to dictate his life._ _

__“Steve, you really shouldn’t keep this from him.”_ _

__“Why not Nat?” he asks – wants to demand really but he knows that’ll get him nowhere – jaw clenching stubbornly, head tilting back in a challenge. “Done a bang-up job of it so far, even had you fooled until you caught me losing the battle with morning sickness that one day. I honestly fail to see why I can’t continue as I’d begun.”_ _

__He sees the truth of that hit her like a slap to the face in the way she tries to hide a flinch. Steve knows that this right now is a crossroads in their lifelong friendship and with one wrong move he could lose her forever._ _

__But then, he hadn’t been the one to start them down this road and while he understood Natasha’s choices, he wasn’t in the mood to stop himself from burning bridges – as sensible as that might be. If he’s being honest with himself, Steve can’t blame that one on the hormones. He’s been in a piss-poor mood and making a run of bad decisions ever since ma’s passing. Adding a broken heart over a one-night stand – who had made it crystal clear that that’s all they were going to be, Steve was the idiot who caught feeling – was just the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back._ _

__“Steve,” she tries sounding placating like he’s some sort of spooked animal. There’s a particularly rough scrap to her husky voice that immediately catches his attention, “Is this really what Sarah would’ve wanted for you?”_ _

__And, oh, that was a low blow. A calculated move on her part and if this conversation were a game of chess then she’d just needlessly sacrificed her queen in a losing gambit. The question makes Steve’s spine go ramrod straight, causing his baby bump to be more obvious from his change in posture. Nat, realizing that she went too far, from the autorotative stance he suddenly assumed, hastens to course-correct herself._ _

__“What I mean is I know she wouldn’t want you to do this on your own,” she’s careful to keep her voice soft, knowing that she’s pushed too hard on a still-open wound but moving forward anyway. “You’re going to need help and James would want to help you, Steve, Hell, I want to help you.”_ _

__“Really? Are you sure about that? Because from where I’m standing you’ve done a fairly good job of forgetting about me. Weren’t we just joking about Clint locking me away two seconds ago? Well, where were you then when I could’ve used some help with that. Fuck, Natasha, why do you think I’m leaving? I’m tired of feeling like the pack's dirty little secret – I’m not about to become Barnes’. And don’t you dare say I won’t. I know for a fact that Barnes hasn’t thought twice about me in the last few months. Loki told me. He told me how Barnes has been out catting around with Johnny Storm, now I’m nothing more than yesterday’s spoiled leftovers as far as the Winter Soldier’s concerned.” Steve doesn’t bother to hide his hurt at that, not anymore._ _

__He understands why Loki told him that and why he said it in such a harsh manner. He’d wanted the lesson to stick. Loki thought it was better to shatter Steve’s illusions of his and Bucky’s little romantic rendezvous being an actual love match as thoroughly as possible. It was done under the misguided assumption that by breaking his brother’s heart now Loki would be saving Steve some heartache in the future but no matter which way you sliced the cake Steve ended up heartbroken._ _

__“Steve, he shouldn’t have told you that –”_ _

__“So you think it would’ve been better if I pinned after a one-night stand like some heartsick fool then learn the truth about my chances?” Steve interrupted her starting to pace towards the street in his aggravation. She didn’t make a move to stop him even though Natasha had to realize that he was getting ready to bolt._ _

__“No, I don’t think that. I just wish Loki had been a bit more sensitive about it, is all.”_ _

__“Loki, sugar coating bad news?” Steve asks her, exaggerating his shock at the suggestion. “When Loki starts to sugar coat things then that’s when I’ll start getting worried.” He tried to joke, “You know me, Nat, I’d rather know the hard truths upfront and Loki has a knack for telling them.”_ _

__She gave him a searching look at that and Steve could practically hear her thinking _“fine be that way, you stubborn ass.”_ He just stared back at her. He was fine and that was the story he was sticking to. It didn’t matter that he was most definitely not fine, at all, by any stretch of the imagination or definition of the word. Steve had made his choices and now he was going to live with them._ _

__“Steve, I–”_ _

__“It’s okay Nat,” he reassured her._ _

__“It's really not,” she countered with a wan smile, “you really shouldn’t be doing this on your own. You should have help and this shouldn’t make you feel like you have to leave your home. Sarah definitely wouldn’t have wanted this.”_ _

__“No ma wouldn’t have,” Steve agreed easily enough before continuing, “yet, Abraham did say that a day may come when we might need to move on from home, and if it did that wouldn’t make us any less family. As for needing help, well, I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”_ _

__“Steve.” This time her affleck was entirely flat and he knew that it was to hide the real emotions that she wasn’t ready to face yet._ _

__“Take care of Clint for me will you Nat? We both know what a disaster he usually is,” Steve asks of her not bothering to address the emotional pink elephant in the alley. “You should probably stick as close to Barnes as he’ll let you, too. It's obvious that the two of you have a history, there’s some trust there–” Steve takes a breath then to brace himself before continuing – “I have the feeling that they’re both going to need your kind of clear thinking around.”_ _

__“Steve.”_ _

__“Natasha.”_ _

__Silence stretched between them then and a world of understanding passed along with it. Her shoulders dropped after a beat or two singling her decision to let things go. At least for now._ _

__“Are we okay?”_ _

__“Not right this minute, but yeah, someday we will be.”_ _

__“I can wait for someday, as long as you let me know when it comes around Rogers,” she chides him before opening her arms up for a hug. He embraces her happily, taking a moment to squeeze her tight and drink in her particular scent of bergamot, cedarwood, and petrichor. Either Natasha was more shaken up than she wanted to let on or she was deliberately being clumsy because Steve felt her plant the tracker on the inside hem of his hoodie when she finally pulled away. He didn’t see the need to mention it either way._ _

__Natasha had never been the sort to leave anything to chance and he trusted her not to push his clearly stated boundaries or abuse any knowledge she might gain from her surveillance. She’d wait for him to reach out to her first before acting on anything she’d gleaned from spying on him, besides he couldn’t really blame her for wanting to stay involved, even if it was on the periphery of her little nieces or nephews life. Truthfully Steve felt comforted knowing that she would be looking out for him and the kidlet._ _

__Natasha turns to leave then, she’s both given Steve the warning she felt she needed to hear as well as tagged him. As far as she was concerned her mission was accomplished and she could be on her way now. She’d known better than to try and talk him into staying, she’d only wanted to stall him long enough to make sure that he knew what he was doing._ _

__“Nat,” he calls out to her just before she could disappear around the corner, “don’t be a stranger, okay? Keep in touch.”_ _

__She nods in understanding then blows him a kiss goodbye. Steve stays where he is for a few more minutes, just to give her enough time to get back into the brownstone, then squaring his shoulders and taking a deep breath he heads out of the alley. He’d made up his mine weeks ago and he wasn’t about to let the stark reality of one sad parting derail him now. It was high time he left home and tried to make it on his own._ _

_I found out_  
_It's not the love that's in your mind_  
_It's the love that you might find_  
_That's gonna save our lives_


	4. Shake it Off

_Regrets collect like old friends  
Here to relive your darkest moments  
I can see no way, I can see no way  
And all of the ghouls come out to play_

Steve’s not sure what compelled him to go north, not when he intended to head south. He’d even gotten as far as Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania on the train before changing his mind and heading north. After spending over nine hours on a train from Penn Station to Pittsburgh for some damn reason Steve decides to catch a bus back up to Albany, NY – taking him through the city again – for fourteen hours and change, only to then catch another bus up to Old Forge, NY which brought his total travel time up to grand total of twenty hours and twelve minutes. To say he was exhausted by the end of it all would be an understatement. He could have taken a stopover anywhere along the way for a night to get a full eight hours of sleep but the constant buzzing underneath his skin kept him from doing just that. Steve needed to move and therefore he kept on moving until the bus let him off in the middle of the afternoon at a lonely bus stop in a small little hamlet. For being such a small town, Steve felt unbelievably lost. He spotted a pancake house down the road and headed in that direction for lack of anything better to do. With his shoulders hunched over Steve walked down the road towards the white and red building trying not to think about what needed to be done next. He just wanted a moment to contemplate what he’d done. No, honestly, he wanted time to forget about it.

He entered the ma and pop pancake house and was immediately greeted by the comforting scent of warm sugar and maple syrup. It permeated every nook and cranny of the joint and made Steve feel as if he were five again, sitting at the back booth of a dinner watching as ma served all-day breakfast to other customers.

Mind made up for him by the tug of nostalgia Steve already knew before the young waitress came by to seat him what he was going to be having, he just didn’t anticipate the sheer smorgasbord of options available to him. Thank goodness he had his heart set on having pancakes otherwise he’d be too overwhelmed by the breakfast menu alone to bother looking at the dinner menu. If questioned he’d be willing to admit he pursed the one-sided laminated piece of paper more than a little slack-jawed as he read over his options, his mouth beginning to water when he noticed that they had homemade maple, blueberry, strawberry, or honey cinnamon syrup. When his waitress came by to collect his order Steve found himself shyly asking if he could mix ‘match a short stack. At her cheerful agreement he ordered one pecan and one apple fold-over with powder sugar and water to drink, she jotted down his order and said she’d bring that right out along with a selection of all of their syrups for him to try.

When the food was finally placed before him, Steve tucked into it greedily having only eaten trail mix and stuff like that he could only get out of the bus or train station vending machines over the last couple of days. Before he knows it, he’s ordered more and dives into the next helping just as happily as he had done his first. He remembers how it was before they joined Erskine’s pack, some days ma’s tips were the only things that allowed them to get their own suppers that weren’t a perfectly good meal that some customers took exception to and sent back to the kitchen for no reason.

He left the pancake house with a full belly and the satisfaction of a good meal but still very much in the same predicament as the one he’d found himself in when he’d arrived in Old Forge. That is, no place to stay and only a duffel bag worth of possessions to his name. He’d been lucky that some of ma’s paranoia from the destruction of his da’s pack had rubbed off on him and Steve had taken to keeping a portion of his paychecks cashed and stashed in his apartment so that he’d had a ready supply of money on hand when he’d made a run for it. But that wouldn’t last forever especially once the baby arrived.

It's a thought that quite literally causes him to freeze in his tracks and the breath to catch painfully in his lungs like lumps of ice. He can feel panic hovering around him like a growing storm, just waiting to bowl him under and Steve takes the time to try and regulate his suddenly rapid breathing to keep it all at bay. He can’t afford to panic right now. Not in the open, especially not while he’s standing on some random ass sidewalk in the middle of Tourist Town, USA, copyright pending. Grasping at straws and trying to hide just how desperate he’s feeling Steve heads straight towards the first vacancy sign he sees like a moth to the flame. He needs somewhere to stay, regardless, and right now he really just wants somewhere to crash so that he could process everything that’s happened in the last forty-eight hours.

He fudges his way through the process of renting one of the places available cottages for a week. Somehow coming across as normal enough to meet the requirements for a rental. Once he's safely ensconced inside the cottage, Steve makes a beeline towards the bed after double-checking that the door was indeed safely locked behind him. After reassuring himself of his safety he promptly crashes in the middle of the bed. Just curls up in the middle of the bed burrioted in the scratchy scentless blankets along with the one worn knitted blanket that still carried some of his ma’s scent that he’d managed to take with him, shivering through the aftershocks of everything that’s happened in the last few days. 

It was a desperate move, leaving one’s pack, one’s family like he did but he can’t say he regretted it. Or at least Steve was fairly positive he wouldn’t regret it. Not that regrets mattered in the end, from now on it was just going to be Steve and his baby, he couldn’t sit around and wait for something better. He'd have to make something better happen for himself and there was no use crying over spilled milk now. Steve couldn’t help but hope that maybe someday down the line he could get back in touch with one or all of his brothers and smooth things over but for his own mental health, he wasn’t going to dwell on it now. After tonight he wasn’t going to cry about things he couldn’t change any more.

**🌻~🌻~🐺~🌻~🌻**

_And every demon wants his pound of flesh  
But I like to keep some things to myself  
I like to keep my issues strong  
It's always darkest before the dawn_

Steve settles in at the motel. He figures that it's as good of a place as any to make a home for right now until he could find something better, somewhere more suitable to raise a child. After all, he still had, roughly, five more months before having a permanent place of residence became a necessity. In the meantime, he was content to just pay by the week for the cozy little cabin the Village Cottages provided. What with its small kitchenette which helped him save on eating out, although he couldn’t bring himself to stay completely away from Keyes Pancake House. Still, it helped him to stick to the healthy pregnancy diet that Loki had drawn up for him and insisted on having Steve follow religiously. Initially, Steve had rolled his eyes at the notion but after following it for a few days his morning sickness and general well being started to improve, Steve decided to be the bigger man and admit that his skepticism was misplaced. Not wanting to return to those days of near-crippling and constant nausea, he kept it up. And if by doing so Steve felt like it was a way to stay in touch with his prickliest brother then nobody but him ever needed to know about that. 

Before Steve’s aware of it he’s spent nearly a month in the sleepy little vacation town. Time had just passed by in a slow steady trickle, catching him by surprise as everything continued to progress whether he was ready for it or not. With each passing day the slight, just beginning to make itself known, little bump he’d left Brooklyn with grew steadily bigger. 

He’s been staying at the Village Cottages and has fallen into a fairly predictable routine, especially when it comes to collecting his groceries. Steve’s mostly kept to himself outside of minor interactions like re-upping his stay at the cottage at the end of each week and his biweekly grocery run and a couple of meals here and there at Keyes. He’d tried some of the other local establishments but he liked Keyes the best and it was in easy walking distance which was becoming more and more important as his pregnancy progressed. Every transaction was handled in cash and the hoodies he’d stolen from Luke and Thor helped to hide his steadily growing baby bump.

All of it was done in an effort to keep himself under the radar and unnoticed. Yet despite his best efforts, Steve knew he wasn’t completely off the grid – he’d felt Natasha plant that tracker on him after all. Plus he’d found it as soon as he’d stopped running long enough to search his clothing. Yeah, the damned thing had been near-microscopic and the only reason he’d known Nat had tagged him in the first place was because she’d purposely been clumsy about it. That was typical Natasha – she’d cheerfully invade your privacy while giving you the illusion of consent at the same time. A lack of consent or outright objection wouldn’t stop her at all but she’d rather have it before going behind your back and doing what she wanted. Natasha liked to keep track of those she cared for and if you were lucky enough to be within that small select circle of people you learned to accept her quirky ways of showing love.

All that’s to say that he knew that Natasha at least knows exactly where he is but he also knew that he could count on her discretion. Just as much as Nat liked keeping tabs on her loved ones, she enjoyed collecting secrets even more. Sometimes Steve couldn’t help but think that her codename was scarily accurate. Natasha would cherish the knowledge of where Steve had decided to settle down for now and save it for a rainy day. It was actually comforting knowing that she was looking out for him. He found himself clinging to that knowledge at night like a safety blanket. For as glad, as he was that he left Brooklyn there were days where Steve couldn’t shake the feeling that he was lost without a pack. Specifically, without the pack he grew up in.

Humans are social creatures and that goes doubly so for werewolves. Omegas were often stereotyped as the epitome of social butterflies, and while there might be some truth in that not all omegas were the stars of the social scene. Steve certainly wasn’t, normally. But the nesting urge combined with finding himself bereft of everyone familiar was making him feel more sociable. It was a universally acknowledged fact that during pregnancy an omega felt more content surrounded by a stable loving pack and Steve had just left his. Now instinct was screaming at him to reach out and form a new pack so that he could bring his baby into a safe, loving, and welcoming environment. His admiration for his mother grew exponentially each day as he gained a new perspective on what it was like to be a single parent without a guaranteed support system that family and pack provided. For five long years, Sarah took care of Steve by herself to the best of her ability, and sometimes that meant that they went lean times but Steve never felt like he went without. He certainly never went without love or affection and he could only hope that he’d do half as good of a job as she did raising his own pup.

For now, he’s just been coasting off of the money he managed to squirrel away over the years hidden in his apartment. A habit he picked up from ma, and one that she actively encouraged. – Steve knew the story about what had happened to his father’s pack, how the Rogers were persecuted across Ireland by ruthless Hunters for what they were, and how they were finally wiped out by those Hunters with a man matching the description of the Winter Soldier at the head of their invading forces. Joseph Rogers died protecting his pack and buying his mate and unborn child enough time to escape from the werewolf hunters that wanted to eliminate them on principle alone. – Ma used to say that a little bit of paranoia never harmed anyone and it never hurt to be prepared for the future. Steve was glad for his precautions now since he’d managed to save up quite a sum of cash and it was keeping him afloat as tried to think up a better solution for his predicament.

In the meantime, he proceeds as he has been, just muddling along and hoping to get through the best he can.

**🌻~🌻~🐺~🌻~🌻**

_And I've been a fool and I've been blind  
I can never leave the past behind  
I can see no way, I can see no way  
I'm always dragging that horse around_

He had noticed a pattern. Nat and Clint liked to tease him that he wasn’t very observant but even Steve could pick up on an obvious pattern of behavior. Every time he came into Keyes he ended up with the same waitress, once or twice he could have put it down as coincidence but after the third time, it was clearly a pattern. Steve couldn’t understand how it kept happening, odds of probability alone suggested that he should’ve gotten at least one other waitress by now but so far no dice. Not that he was complaining! Daisy’s a sweet girl with a bubbly personality and a quick sarcastic quip always in her back pocket. She was always wearing something – be it a sticker, hair clip, or button – that was sky blue with a happy smiling cloud or something to that effect. Steve asked her about that once, as she was refilling his glass of milk. He had to give up coffee a few weeks ago, the caffeine caused his little passenger to bounce around on his bladder far too much to be tolerable.

“Oh, yeah that,” she answered with a chuckle, “when I was little I was obsessed with the sky and actually went through, like a two, uhm, maybe three-year phase where I made everyone call me Skye instead of Daisy. Bit of a brat about it, really.”

“I think that’s adorable,” Steve told her honestly joining her in chuckling.

“Yeah it was up to a point, then my dad kinda put his foot down about it. We negotiated so now Skye’s my official middle name.”

“Sounds like you were one clever little girl,” Steve told her with admiration.

“Maybe too clever for my own good if you believe my patents,” she shot back with a big laugh and a wink before sauntering back towards the kitchen to pick up another tables’ order. Business had started to pick up lately from just the local regulars, a sure sign, Daisy informed him, of the tourist season starting to kick into swing. That made sense to Steve since winter was starting to give way to the warm breath of spring as April started to fade into May. And for as much as it made sense to him it also worried him. Once the tourist season was in full swing there were no assurances that he’d be able to hold onto his ‘cottage’ at the Village B&B. Sure he had the money he saved, as well as the papers for the Rogers trust that ma made sure he knew about growing up, so money wasn’t really an issue right now – although he’d prefer not to dip into the Rogers pack money. Ma always believed that whoever wiped out his father’s pack would try and track their money.

There had never been any reason for them to live hand to mouth during those early years before Abraham found them, but Sarah did that to keep them off the radar of some very vindictive people. They never really knew who took out the Rogers pack, at least, not until all of SHIELD/Hydra’s paperwork was leaked onto the internet when Barnes took out Pierce. Evidently, Alexander Pierce had attempted to broker a deal with Joseph Rogers – if he would kindly overlook Hydra’s activity in Ireland, the Pierce would support him in, or any policy Joseph wanted through the Irish parliament. Steve can only assume that Pierce thought Joseph would have been an easy sell, a backwater Alpha out of touch with the rest of the world who still clung to his pack's traditions and superstitions, why wouldn’t jump at such an offer? Unfortunately, for Alexander, he’d bargained without considering the Rogers trait for integrity. It bit him in the ass and signed the death warrant for the entire pack at the same time.

The Argents were once considered the worst group of Hunters out there, but they’d exorcised the weeds and went back to following the code with stricter punishments to those who dared to break it. The Winchesters were dangerous because they hunted everything and anything at the drop of a hat, but they also had a conscience. Hydra had no code and no conscience to speak of.

Perhaps he should’ve been surprised when Hydra’s files leaked in the spring of 2011 and his father’s pack was listed among the eliminated ‘threats’. Joseph Rogers quite literally with a bullet-shaped bullet point. Sometimes, Hydra really wasn’t that subtle. Which, really, when he stopped to think about it, that made the fact that they managed to hide and grow within Aunt Pegs’ pack like some cancerous lesion all the more shocking. They must’ve kept the truly terrible actors stationed in Siberia or Antarctica in order to avoid being detected. 

Or maybe the bastards just consistently got lucky. Hell, for all he knew Hydra could’ve bought a shit ton of luck charms from magic-users who didn’t care who they sold their wares to.

In the end, he supposes it doesn’t matter either way. He was far too busy at the time to obsess over the revelation and all that it implied - ma’s chemo appointments were far more important to him than the accounts of a racist cult that should’ve stayed buried in history. Steve reckons that their little catchphrase “cut off one head, two more shall take its place” is accurate enough, but it could also be applied to bigotry and bigots of any sort; it’s like mold. Growing slowly and steadily in the damp and the dark, not making itself known until it seems like some sort of insurmountable problem - a pain in the ass and time consuming to deal with but never insurmountable.

“Heya, Steve-o, you alright there,” Daisy asks, rapping her knuckles smartly on the formica tabletop to get his attention.

“What? Oh, yes, I’m fine Daisy, just daydreaming,” he answered, noticing for the first time that he’d left his fork hanging halfway between his plate and his mouth. He put it back down on the plate feeling his cheekbones begin to heat with a blush.

“You sure that’s all you were doing? Not gonna lie there bud, but the way you sitting there staring off into the distance not moving and all, for a minute I was afraid that your water had broken, or something, and you just didn’t know how to say anything.”

Steve, in an event of epically bad timing, had just taken a sip of water while Daisy was talking and nearly choked on it from coughing in reaction to what she had said and the need to refute it. 

“ No, _no!_ Nothing like that had happened.” He hastened to reassure her, “What would possess you to think so?”

“Well, you act like you’re smuggling a turkey underneath those hoodies of yours, and my nose isn’t sharp enough to scent you without bursting your personal bubble, so I can’t really tell how far along you are.” She started to explain and Steve could feel the color drain out of his face as he realized that Daisy at least had guessed his secret. “It seemed like a reasonable conclusion at the time, but judging by the face you’re making it’s not so reasonable?” She finished looking alarmed. “Steve?” 

“Sorry, Daisy, it's just, I wasn’t really planning on letting anyone know, about, you know,” he concluded with a sharp aborted movement towards his belly.

“Oh, I’m sorry Steve,” she apologized and Steve waved it off. 

It was too late now and after thinking about it for a minute he found that he didn’t really mind Daisy knowing. He told her as much and that earned him one of her big bright smiles. She gave him the check shortly after that and Steve left the restaurant feeling slightly better about his situation. A feeling that lasted as long as it took him to get back to his cottage. He found a notice on the door informing him that the place would be rented out to a new visitor midway through June. That gave him just about another month to figure out what to do with himself. So much for his good mood, he was going to go take a nap and think things over. Perhaps while he slept a solution would come to him, honestly that seemed like the best thing to do at the moment.

**🌻~🌻~🐺~🌻~🌻**

“Mama Maria,” Daisy sing-songed as she skipped into the packhouse straight off of her afternoon shift at Keyes out in town.

The Danver-Rambeau pack lands were located along the shoreline of Raquette Lake. They had established a small community which consisted of the main packhouse, a sprawling cabin done in a ranch-style on raised stilts since it was close to the lowest edge of the lake (and therefore at risk of flooding in the spring), a general store, a small bar, a boat launch, an even smaller library, and a chapel. The pack made its living mostly by renting out campgrounds and cabins to vacationers - and those pack members who didn’t want to live in the packhouse owned their own cabins. Only a few members of the pack lived up there all year round the rest were snowbirds going down south to Louisiana, where they still hold the Rambeau pack lands and escaping the often harsh New York winters in the Adirondacks. Maria’s daughter Monica generally stayed in Louisiana year-round as her mother’s right hand looking after affairs down there, only occasionally coming up in the summertime for a visit. 

“Daisy,” Maria greeted the twenty-year-old, stepping out from the cabin's mudroom and making gimmie motions with her hands for the girl's apron. She already had a load ready to go so she might as well just add Daisy things to it before the child forgot again and they had a repeat of the maple-syrup-fabric-zombie-monster of 2009. It was truly remarkable the things a bored druid in training could come up with when she went weeks in between skype sessions with her mentor.

“Oh sweet! Thanks, mama, you want me to whip up something for dinner?”

“Sam's barbecuing tonight,” Maria told her.

“Noice, noice,” she replied mimicking one of her favorite shows, “want me to do something for dessert then?”

“No need hun. Why don’t you go shower off the pancake batter smell then come out on the back porch and tell us about your day. I’m guessing you saw built, blond, and sad again?”

“Oh man, did I _ever!_ And I’ve got one hell of a scoop for you tonight,” she opened her mouth to keep going but Maria held her off by holding up a hand.

“Go get cleaned up then come back down and tell the rest of us all at once, alright.”

Daisy gave her a cheeky salute in reply then turned around and headed towards her bedroom and its connected bathroom. Maria shook her head in exasperated fondness at the younger woman’s ridiculousness before heading back into the mudroom and adding Daisy's apron into the washer. She set the timer on the machine and left, walking down the short hall, then through the kitchen and out the sliding deck door to join everyone else already gathered out there.

“Daisy’s home,” Carol guessed after taking one look at her mate’s face. Maria simply nodded accepting the open beer her wife handed to her with a kiss on the check.

“She says she’s got some news,” Maria informed the blonde and the smile lines around Carol’s eyes crinkled at that even though she barely moved the corner of her lips. Not for the first time, Maria thanked her lucky stars that they both got out of the Air Force when they did. Flying, flying was impossible to describe and it meant a heck of a lot to the both of them but constantly having to prove themselves day in and day out was going to put them in an early grave. Not only were they battling the stigma of women can’t be effective pilots at the time but there was the added mark against them for being an alpha and alpha mated pair. When Carol had her crash in ‘89 and somehow managed to walk away from it unscathed they both decided it was time to call it quits.

That had been one of the most difficult decisions either one of them had ever made, but by god was Maria happy they did it. 

Carol hummed noncommittally at the announcement of Daisy having news, since she was one of the few of them who regularly had to go into town (as if Old Forge was some big glitzy city) she was always coming home with some new choice bit of gossip to share. Be it about the latest stunt old Stan Lee pulled in his efforts to prank the entire town and any tourist he could, more than once, or a cute story of a little kid she met in the pancake house that day. Lately, Daisy’s topic of choice was a new addition to town, a blond man who wore his sadness like a cloak drawn tight about his shoulders. She’d spotted him for a werewolf straight away and had been trying to talk either Carol or Maria into going into town and greeting him. She thought he would make a great addition to their pack.

They’ve learned to listen to her hunches over the years, now it was just a matter of how to approach the stranger. A werewolf caught up in strong emotions needed to be handled carefully and sometimes, to be perfectly frank, Carol lacked the soft touch required for such a conversation. The thing was Maria needed more information about the man other than his name was Steve, he’s hot like burning, and his favorite pancake order.

Down by the barbeque pit, there’s Mac and Sam playfully arguing with each other about the best method for grilling ribs as Sam manned the grilled and simultaneously mined slapping at Mac’s grabby hands with the tongs. Riley was in a chair next to the patio table sipping on a drink of his own watching the other two men bicker back and forth occasionally throwing in a comment of his own just to stir the pot a little more and earning an exasperatedly fond look from Sam.

Sharing a look of her own with Carol, Maria hooked her arm through her wife’s, and after leaning in for another kiss, she led her mate and her Alpha down to join the rest of their small pack. Well did she remember those days of early courting and that tantalizing charge of will they or won’t they, was this going to be the moment that they finally kissed, or was it just another might have been. She might have met Carol later in life, when she already had a three-year-old daughter and thought she couldn’t possibly find love again, not after Monica’s beta father passed away, but then she started working at Edwards Air Force Base and ran smack into Carol Danvers. A reckless, flashy flyer, in the style of _Top Gun_ and her mate. Maria knew it the moment she first clapped eyes on the blonde with her Farrah Fawcett fly away curls and Rolling Stones t-shirts.

They had just settled down at the table next to Riley when Daisy came barreling through the sliding glass doors and stomping down the deck steps to the patio where the barbeque pit lay. 

“Oh my god, so get this!” She declared as if her entrance hadn’t been enough an announcement, “Steve came into the restaurant today - ”

“Must be Tuesday,” Mac interrupted her with a cheeky grin. Daisy paused long enough just to stick her tongue out at him.

“Anyway, like I was _sayin’_ Steve came in today and we chatted, like we usually do, and I found out that my hunch about him being preggers isn’t so much of a hunch after all, so take that Mac!” She concluded jumping towards the large beta and jabbing a finger in his chest. All done in good humor, if there was anything malicious behind either one of their actions Carol would’ve put them in their place with a low warning growl.

“Okay, okay, mercy,” Mac exclaimed, grasping Daisy's wrist in a loose grip. “You were right, I was wrong, that’ll teach me to judge someone’s secondary gender based on their physical appearance.”

“Honestly, Mac you should know better, how many times have people mistaken you for an alpha when you’re a beta?”

“When did we determine that this Steve was an omega?” Sam interjected, asking the real questions.

“Oh weeks ago,” Daisy answered flippantly. “Don’t you see Mas,” she continued turning back to her Alphas, “we have to bring him into the flock now.”

Maria caught Carol’s gaze out of the corner of her eye. There was no denying that Daisy was right, nobody wanted an emotionally distraught omega left to his own devices without a pack and a baby on the way. Carol nodded her agreement.

“Alright, Sam you’re the welcome wagon,” Maria informed the Grill Master, who paused in the middle of transferring the now down ribs from the heat of the grill to a platter to whip around and stare at the Alpha pair incredulously. Mac patted him on the shoulder commiseratingly as he passed him to go inside and grab the salads.

“Why me?” Sam asked, baffled. “Won’t I just spook him?”

“You’re an alpha but you’re also human and most importantly you aren’t one of those knothead alphas,” Carol answered him, “that goes a long way. Just approach him slowly and invite him up to the house for dinner.” 

_Shake it out, shake it out  
Shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa  
And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back  
So shake him off, oh whoa_

**🌻~🌻~🐺~🌻~🌻**

_I see your hurt, I feel your pain  
All of our dirt is washed in the rain  
I've walked that road, I've felt that shame  
No place is home but times, they are changin'_

A solution presents itself when Steve’s least expecting it. 

For the past couple of days, he’s had an undeniable craving for a peanut butter and fluffernutter sandwich on potato bread. It's way outside of his approved diet plan and he hasn’t had a sandwich like that since he was a kid but he just can’t get the idea out of his head. It’s with that goal in mind that Steve makes his way towards the town’s one and only grocery store. At nearly five and a half months pregnant now, Steve’s gait had started to slow down from his usually fast clip to more of a stroll, and soon enough it would probably develop into a waddle. Oddly enough, Steve was actually looking forward to it. For a long time there, before he finally decided to accept the Bite from dad, Steve was worried that he might never conceive, not with how sickly of a kid he had been. This pregnancy had surprised him in a lot of ways – not just because it was unplanned – but because of how he’s reacted to it so far. Thor really hadn’t been wrong with his claim that pregnancy had mellowed Steve. In a lot of ways that was true, Steve wasn’t so inclined to fall face-first into a fight anymore. Now he was more inclined to use his words. But what really took Steve by surprise was the fact that he could actually feel himself glowing from the pregnancy hormones.

Yet, that did not mean that he was ready to share the good news with complete strangers. Especially after the way, his own brothers reacted upon learning that he was signal and expecting. Daisy stumbling across his little secret hadn’t been his plan but he was finding himself adjusting to it. Still, every day he found more and more reasons to be grateful that packed mostly oversized ‘borrowed’ clothing. It helped immensely in hiding the growing bump as well as fulfilled Steve’s growing need to nest.

He entered the Big M supermarket and meandered through the aisles after collecting a shopping basket. Just because Steve came to the supermarket with a goal in mind didn’t mean he couldn’t spend some time browsing. And browse he did. Before he knew it, Steve’s arm was loaded down with a nearly full basket and he'd only just reached the bread aisle. Frowning slightly at the contents of the basket he adds the loaf of potato bread gently on top of everything else trying to remember exactly when he added everything within and coming up blank. With an entirely mental shrug to himself, Steve decides not to question things too much. At least he managed to get the peanut butter and fluff, but it was probably past time he checked out.

“Now that’s a familiar look,” a bass deep voice enriched with a joyful chuckle greeted Steve before he could move on to the checkout line. He looked up from the perplexing contents of his basket to find himself face to face with an attractive man with dimples in his cheeks and a charming gap between his front teeth. “Pregnancy brain it’s one hell of a thing,” he finished commenting startling Steve.

“Pregnant? I’m not,” he tried to deny the truth then quickly deflated underneath the man’s gentle knowing smile. “That obvious, is it?”

“Well, the gallon of Moose Tracks combined with the bag of Reese’s cups and two things of peanut butter, one chunky one smooth, plus the fluffernutter, and the package of peanut butter cookies is telling me that you’re having a pretty big craving for peanut butter right now. That and the rueful face you’d just made at the description of the contents of your basket peanut butter is not your go too snack so it’s definitely just a pregnancy craving.”

“No, not really,” Steve answered honestly thinking back to all of the peanut butter flavored snacks he had been making for Thor recently. Evidently, Thor’s love for everything peanut butter had rubbed off on him. Unconsciously, he found himself rubbing at the back of his neck with his free hand out of embarrassment for being so easily spotted. So much for trying to keep his pregnancy discreet, this man just outed him in half a minute flat. 

“I’m sorry to have embarrassed you,” the stranger apologized. “I’m Sam, by the way, Sam Wilson.” He introduced himself holding out his hand for a shake and Steve took it shaking it briefly but not so quickly as to seem rude. 

Steve could tell that the man was an alpha and had gotten particular about the scent of alphas clinging to him lately. The pack scent had faded from his skin weeks ago and he didn’t really want anything else taking its place. He’d read about it in one of the pregnancy books Loki had given him, as a cautionary tale for omegas who had been abandoned by their chosen alpha. An abandoned omega would start to avoid the scent of alphas, even well-trusted pack members. To say that he was experiencing trust issues right now would be a minor understatement. 

And wasn’t that just Steve all over, a cautionary tale chock full of trust issues.

“Steve Rogers,” he replied, giving the alpha a shy smile and trying to inch past him, his shoulders hunched in an attempt to make himself appear smaller than he was. Sometimes Steve forgot that he was no longer 5’4” and rail-thin. He suddenly wanted out of the grocery store and back to his room (while he still had it).

Sam, sensing that he was uncomfortable backed up and gave him more space in the aisle so that Steve could easily walk past him. “I don’t mean to intrude,” Sam started as he watched Steve struggling with his overflowing basket as he made his way down the aisle. It really was getting difficult maneuvering anything around with the addition of his baby bump but worth it for the little fluttery movements of his child within him. “But I was wondering if you’d like some help with those?”

And was so typical of Steve he went from embarrassed and shy to pissed off in two point five seconds flat, “I’m not some damsel in distress that you can just swoop in and rescue.” He snapped.

“Whoa, whoa, calm down, I didn’t mean no offense.”

“No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap and you certainly didn’t deserve that. Thank you for the offer but I’m okay.” If Steve had been embarrassed before then he was doubly so now. Of all of the foolish things to go and do - now he’ll be known as the over-emotional wackadoodle who yells at random strangers in the grocery store.

“Hey man, everyone gets tired and snippy sometimes it's no biggie. But thanks for apologizing, means a lot,” Sam accepted Steve’s apology gracefully - far more so than Steve had ever been known to accept one. “My offer was genuine, I’d like to help you if you’d let me, and I have to admit have a bit of an alternative motive,” he added sheepishly giving Steve a rueful grin showing off a charming gap in between his two front teeth as well as a pair of dimples.

“Oh,” Steve inquired, handing over his basket to the man. If Sam was going to insist then who was Steve to tell him no a second time. “What’s that?”

“My Alphas wanted me to invite you up to the packhouse for dinner tonight,” Sam answered offering Steve his elbow. Steve waved it away and made his way up to the cash registers under his own steam. 

“Is this an invitation I could table for later?”

“I suppose, but honestly, I don’t think you’d want to,” Sam told him truthfully as he watched Steve put all of his groceries up on the conveyor belt. The other man proceeded to state his case as Steve checked out and then took his bags for him without asking then herded him out of the store and into the parking lot.

“You’re not gonna let this go are you?” Steve asked, trying to keep the smile off of his face. For all that Sam was being a little bit pushy, he was still polite about it and Steve got the sense that if he were to give the alpha a hard no the man would walk away with no hard feelings felt at all.

“Nope,” Sam replied, popping the ‘p’, “that’s just how it is.”

“Is that so? Well, I suppose I might as well accept.” How was Steve to know what a life-changing decision that was going to be and how he would never come to regret it? He couldn’t have, but he certainly was pleased to discover that was the case. 

_This is our sanctuary  
We can find shelter and peace  
This is our sanctuary  
You are, you are safe with me  
This is our sanctuary  
We can find shelter and peace  
This is our sanctuary  
You are, you are safe with me_


	5. Home

[](https://imgur.com/l5Bupkr)

_I am not the only traveler  
Who has not repaid his debt  
I've been searching for a trail to follow again  
Take me back to the night we met_

Naturally, Natasha waited until Bucky was completely disgusted with himself to finally put him out of his own misery. He was sitting slumped over on the couch in Steve’s abandoned apartment just marinating in the fading scent of the omega. After fifteen months there was barely any scent of Steve left lingering in the ambient air, but it could still be found embedded in the fabric of the furniture or the various blankets and pillows. He’d clearly loved his blankets and used them frequently without over washing them.

Lately, Bucky could be found there more days than not. Turning himself into a miserable alpha burrito with Steve’s million throw blankets. He had tried dating for a while, but that hadn’t really worked out for him. His choices might not have been the best if you asked his packmates. If you asked Natasha, he was just trying to replace Steve, to the point of _“chasing partners that literally looked exactly like the one that got away”_ , to quote Natasha directly.

Bucky tried to tell her that that was a ridiculous accusation. But in the end, he couldn’t stand up to one of her poignantly raised eyebrows which, really, said all that there needed to be said on the matter. Not that that stopped her from voicing her full opinion. Especially, once she knew she had his undivided attention. For a while, however, her lectures had the opposite effect than what she’d hoped for. Instead of reigning him in, and convincing him that he should go and track down the wayward omega who had so clearly stolen his heart, Bucky went in the opposite direction and continued to strut about sowing his wild oats. As the heir apparent to three pack dynasties – once his past was leaked to the world at large there had been no unringing that bell, not that he would have, it had been the only way to fully flush out Hydra from every dank corner they were hiding in – he had become the most eligible bachelor to ever bachelor. (Regardless of how he felt about the matter). The Sargent was more myth than man at this point and the fact that one James Buchannan Barnes actually still lived and breathed was just gravy. No one actually seemed to care about getting to know about Bucky the man, who was far different from the person legend made him out to be and was night and day from the naïve young man he’d been before he’d been bitten; even though he’d already seen some action at the Eastern Front of the War. They only wanted a piece of the legend to call their own. And the only one who ever seemed interested in getting to know the real James Barnes had been the kid he’d mistaken for a beta and an easy lay. Someone that he could just hit it then quit it.

No wonder Steve had taken to avoiding Bucky that he went to the extreme measures of leaving his own _pack_ , his _family_ , just to get away and make sure he never ran into the other man again. It would also explain why Clint was so pissed with him. Although it was hard to say if Barton was madder at him for ruining the Council’s plans or chasing Steve off. Bucky honestly thought that the other man didn’t have any reason to be upset about it. He’d gotten what he wanted, Natasha freed from any further obligations of having to work with S.H.I.E.L.D.

Not that it stopped her from bugging him whenever she felt like it.

“Moping again I see,” she announced her presence after waiting a few minutes in silence.

“Isn’t that preferable to me acting like a tom cat in heat,” Bucky snapped back.

“After that last prima donna you brought home, let me think, yes.”

“He wasn’t that bad,” Bucky tried to defend his last choice in a partner even though his heart wasn’t really in it. She came around the corner of the couch to stare at him like he was insane.

“The man’s name was Ransom, and he was more of a diva than Loki,” she explained slowly and patiently as if she was talking to an overtired child. “And we love Loki so we’re happy to tolerate the occasional mood swing. That tool was _impossible_ the only thing charming about him was his resemblance to Steve. You need to stop shtupping everyone in New York who reminds you of _him_ and actually go find him and admit that you were a horse's ass.”

“Excuse me,” Bucky asked, his voice becoming stilted as he turned his head to glare at her. “But I’m not the one who dressed him up as something he wasn’t then sent him out into the lion's den.”

“Steve has never once done anything in his life that he didn’t want to do,” Natasha defended herself not sounding apologetic in the least. But then again she never did. The Red Room did not raise their operatives to feel remorseful and Natalia did not sweat small decisions.

“Right, and you didn’t deliberately mislead him or me, at all.”

“Not my problem if you forgot how to use your nose.”

“Na _talia_ ,” he growled rising up from the couch to tower over her, trying to intimidate her. “Why is it so impossible for you to admit that you made a mistake by meddling? You should’ve left well enough alone and given us a chance to meet naturally on our own. Would it really have been so hard if the Council's original plans for those negotiations went through sealed with a marriage?”

“Yes! It would’ve been a disaster James and you know it.” She came back at him, standing toe to toe with him undaunted by his attempt at intimidation even though the top of her head barely reached his collar bone. Natasha had never been one to be intimidated. 

“Can’t be more of a disaster than the one we’re experiencing now.”

“You don’t know that!” She nearly shouted before physically taking a step back and taking a deep breath. Bucky did the same realizing that their argument had gotten rather childish, for them. 

“Listen, James, I didn’t come here to start an argument. I wanted to tell you something,” she finally offered as an olive branch. “I know where Steve is, and I’ll let you in on the secret on how to get in touch with him if you promise not to abuse it.”

It was like dangling a carrot in front of a horse with one hand and switch in the other. Well, two could play that game. “I’ll only accept your terms if you promise me that you and Barton will apologize to Steve.”

“We already have,” she told him, reaching into her back pocket and pulling out a slip of paper. “Top address is his, the bottom one is a PO box I set up for you to use.” She put the bit of paper in his hand and turned to leave.

Natasha was almost to the door when Bucky stopped her with one last question; “It’s been almost two years Natalia, how long were you going to sit on this information?

“As long as I needed to until you were ready for it.”

And with that parting shot, Natasha left him to continue wallowing on his own in Steve’s abandoned den. Bucky stared at the little slip of paper with the two mailing addresses on it for god knows how long before finally getting up and going for a walk. He thought some fresh air might help him to clear his head and figure out what he might want to do.

When he came back he had a pile of postcards in his hands, the type that New York City tourists would pick up thinking that they’d make good souvenirs and a packet of new pens. He sat down at the coffee table and started writing trying not to overthink things too much. He did stop to think about what he was doing until the postcard he’d picked up, just a random one off the top of the pile, was chock full of his small handwriting and he couldn’t possibly fit anything else on it.

Bucky almost wants to kick himself for using a pen or not trying to organize his thoughts with a first draft or something before he wrote on the postcard. But it’s too late for regrets now. If he takes the time to rethink things he’ll end up not sending anything at all. So he takes the overfilled, rambling postcard and walks down the block until he finds a mailbox to slip it into. Part of him doubted that Natasha had actually given him Steve’s real address - especially since it was just a PO box and could go anywhere - and the rest of him hoped that his postcard reached the omega and then Steve replied. It would probably take a miracle, but maybe, just maybe Bucky was due one or two of those.

_I had all and then most of you  
Some and now none of you  
Take me back to the night we met  
I don't know what I'm supposed to do  
Haunted by the ghost of you  
Oh, take me back to the night we met_

**🌻~🌻~🐺~🌻~🌻**

> _I have no idea if this will find you, or how it will find you, but in the off chance that it does, I hope it finds you well. That seems like such a pointless thing to say – _I hope it finds you well_ – how fucking trite. Me? I’m just peachy. Well, that's not quite true. I’m in a real pickle here, pal, everywhere I turn there are all these expectations about who I am, how I should react to things, the kind of person I’m meant to be. But the truth of the matter is I don’t even know who I am anymore. Still trying to figure that one out, actually. It’s so damn difficult. Trying to discover who you are, when everyone is telling you what you’ve always _been_ , what you’ve meant to them, how much you still _mean_ to them like you’re a piece of publicly-traded information, not an actual human being. Sitting here re-reading what I’ve written, I can’t help but feel like such a fucking hoop-dee._  
>  _Shit, I’m gonna run out of room real quick here if I tell you everything I want to. Had the sense right from the start that I could probably tell you anything and you’d never judge me for it. For as judgmental as your face looks, you’re really not that condemnatory of a person. You certainly have your opinions, that’s for damn sure, but you don’t allow them to cloud how you see other people. At least not for long. Christ, are you one stubborn son of a bitch. Five minutes in your company was enough time for me to learn that. You’re stubborn, sometimes stupidly so, but not to the point of blind ignorance. But you’re not stupid._  
>  _And, maybe you’re thinking I couldn't possibly know you well enough to know that about you, we hardly interacted with each other past one night. And, well, I’m going off of how the people around you speak so highly of you. How protective of you they are and how much they love you. I’m explaining this wrong, I know I am and I’m running out of room to try and make myself clearer but you gotta trust me on this one kid._

**🌻~🌻~🐺~🌻~🌻**

_Everything she sees  
She says she wants  
Everything she wants  
I see she gets_

In the past twenty months Steve never once had a reason to regret agreeing to go with Sam and meet his Alphas. Carol and Maria had greeted him with open arms and Steve were never once made to feel as if he was wrong for being unmated and pregnant. They simply made him feel welcome, giving him a room in their packhouse while Mac and Sam worked on fixing up an old cabin - updating it and making sure that it would be fit to live in for a single parent and a young child. Steve wanted to assist them in fixing the place up but Carol vetoed it, telling him that his only job for the rest of the summer was to relax and concentrate on growing the new life within him. He’d tried to object a couple of times but Maria sat him down and explained to him that in this regard Carol would be one of those alphas, convinced that any pregnant member of her pack immediately became as fragile as spun glass just because there was a baby on board. Maria reassured him that that wouldn’t always be the case and it probably was only happening now because it had been some year since the last time there was a new baby in the pack. Steve told her that that was sweet, but he’d go starkers if he were to spend the rest of his pregnancy cooped up doing nothing. Maria had laughed good-naturedly at that and informed him that he could work the ice cream counter inside the general store for a few hours each day.

And that’s exactly what he did through the rest of that spring and summer tourist season. It had amused Steve to learn that Sam ran the Raquette Lake general store, one-stop-shop hardware, post office, and grocery store, with a small ice cream counter and bakery since Sam had approached Steve in what could easily be considered his competition just to talk to Steve. Sam didn’t consider the Big M market a competitor, but he could appreciate the irony of the situation. 

The Danvers-Rambeau pack hadn’t been like anything Steve was expecting. And was an absolutely perfect fit for him because of it. Carol and Maria ran the pack like a well-oiled machine, that’s not to say that they were mechanical in their approach but rather that it was clear that both knew and understood their roles and shared duties as the Alpha pair and were comfortable in them. It was something that Steve hadn’t ever seen and couldn’t help but admire. For all that outsiders claimed that Abraham and Sarah ran the Erskine pack as the Alpha pair, it was obvious to those who knew how to look for it, that they were still mourning the losses of their mates and it affected their decisions. Then when Clint stepped into their father’s footsteps he wasn’t confident enough in his position to lead a pack with the kind of easy confidence that Carol and Maria both displayed. 

Like his family pack, the Danvers-Rambeau pack was made up of ‘wolves and other individuals who found their way to either Carol or Maria in a time of need. Unlike the Erskine pack, the core of the Danvers-Rambeau pack was the Rambeau family in New Orleans where they still held their ancestral pack lands. Steve learned that the ancestral pack lands and the family living upon them were now under the leadership of Maria’s daughter Monica. A good chunk of the pack split their time between living in Louisiana and coming to the Adirondacks for vacation. Those who lived up here along with Carol and Maria in their semi-retirement were Sam and Riley, Mac, Daisy, Rocket, and a strange fellow named Groot who Carol described as a ‘hippie-wolf’ more than a werewolf and told Steve not to expect to see much of him but if he did happen to see a large brown wolf with clumps of moss in his fur lurking around don’t be alarmed that’s just Groot.

Steve got a kick out of working the ice cream counter and interacting daily with the little kids who would come rushing in to look at the various flavors they had on offer. Each and every one of them, even the ‘indifferent’ teens would get up to the display cases and look over to see all the open tubs and their eyes would go wide with wonder at the riot of color and flavor, from black cherry to vibrant green mint chocolate chip and a deep cotton candy blue ice cream with chunks of peanut butter cups, sugar cone, and chocolate in it that was locally known as dinosaur tracks. It was a popular flavor amongst the kids. One particular little bond, blue-eyed boy would come running up to the counter and rawr at the counter pointing at the tub of blue ‘cream. And once Steve handed over his kiddie cone in a dish the little guy would rawr again then walk around his mother doing his ‘dino walk’ - hunched over, stomping his feet with his hands behind his back occasionally roaring and taking a break to feed himself some more ice cream - the little guy couldn’t have been more than nineteen, or twenty months old at most and was absolutely adorable. Steve hoped that his own pup would be just as cute.

When fall came around Steve’s baby bump had grown so large that it kept him from being able to bend over and scoop the ice cream, so he started helping Mac out at the Raquette Lake Library. He’d sit in a rocking chair and prop his feet up on a footstool and then host a storytime for the local kids and visiting children at ten o’clock in the morning and one o’clock in the afternoon. 

That lasted until the first week of October when Steve’s water broke and he gave birth to his own little bundle of joy, a baby girl that he named Sarah Margaret Rogers after the two most important women he’d known in his life. Carol commented that that was quite a name for a young lady to grow into and Steve agreed, although he thought his daughter could manage it. In the meantime, he called her Margo as a nickname and it soon caught on with the rest of the pack.

If Thor thought pregnancy had mellowed Steve then he’d be shocked to see how parenthood had changed him. Steve stayed in the packhouse while he adjusted to late-night feedings and diaper changes and Margo adjusted to life outside of the womb and learning how to sleep through the night. Mac and Sam had finished fixing up an old cabin for him long before Margo’s debut but Steve hadn’t really done anything with it yet aside from ordering some linens and dishware, just some mild nesting really. By the time Margo was seven months old eating solid food, and sleeping through the night regularly, Steve moved them out to the refurbished one-floor cabin that consisted of two and a half rooms and a full bath.

The main room was an open kitchen and shared living room with two doors leading off of it, one to the full bathroom and the other to the bedroom. The bedroom was just over half the size of the main room with a little alcove big enough to fit a bassinet for now and then later a twin bed and wardrobe set meant for a little girl. The rest of the bedroom had a full-size bed with a classic Adirondack frame made out of varnished bent branches and logs. A carved wooden dresser and chair with a lamp behind it and one small bookcase. Sam had also taken the liberty of furnishing the living room and kitchen with sturdy wooden furniture. The rest of the furnishings and decorations were up to Steve’s discretion and he used his saved funds and access to the pack’s online shopping accounts to fix the place up to his level of comfort. There was a porch that wrapped around the entire cabin and a sandy path that led down to a small beach with a dock beside it.

As for Margo’s needs, things like baby clothes, toys, board books, and other items tended to just magically appear. The pack doted upon her openly and at any excuse would take her to just spend time with her. Margo grew up knowing that she was wanted and that she was loved to the moon and back. And who couldn’t love her? At ten months Margo had wispy blond hair with loose ringlet curls, that Steve was loathed to cut and hoped she would keep as she grew older, and steel-blue green eyes that at times caught him off guard and reminded him painfully of her other father.

There were moments that Steve wished he could share the wonder that was knowing Margo, getting to watch her grow up and discover the world, with Bucky and he found himself mourning what could have been. Moments like her first full belly laugh when she started to crawl, the first tooth she cut, when she took her first steps, her first word, moments, and little milestones like that. Bucky was missing out on so much and Steve couldn’t even share it because the other man had no idea he had a child. 

Steve also wanted to share all of these little milestones with his family in Brooklyn, but he wasn’t sure how welcome it would be. He knew Natasha knew where he was because she had sent him a couple of letters intermittently since he left just to keep him up to date on how things were going - major life events with the family, like Cassie losing her two front teeth just in time for her sixth birthday and the cute little lisp she developed because of it - and because they kept is sporadic contact Nat knew that he had the baby. Steve had sent her a slew of photos in the mail documenting some of Margo’s own first. When Natasha had written back asking if it was okay to share those pictures with Wade or Luis and Scott. Maybe even share his mailing address with them Steve had given her the okay, part of him hoping that perhaps one of his brothers would write. But in all this time Steve hadn’t heard a single word from any of them.

Then on Margo’s first birthday a box arrived with a return address of Bed-Stuy Brooklyn NY addressed to Baby Rogers. Inside was a bunch of baby clothes, some sized 12-18 months and the rest sized 18-24 months, a werewolf stuffie, and a photograph of Steve with his brothers, Natasha, ma, and dad. There was also a postcard with a picture of a howling wolf underneath a full moon on one side and a heartfelt note from Clint on the other. It was a start at an apology and Steve found himself tearing up at it, especially the last line Clint wrote to him:

> _I understand if you’re not ready to write back just yet, but I hope to hear from you soon. I really would love the opportunity to meet my little niece and/or nephew._

Steve sent back an envelope with a picture of Margo with cake all over her face and on the back of it the date was written as well as:

> _will stay in touch_

_That's my daughter in the water  
Everything she owns, I bought her  
Everything she owns_

After a while, Steve stopped wanting to send notes to Bucky, stopped wanting to include him in Margo’s life. He figured that there was a reason why the alpha walked out on him and he should just accept it. A true sign that becoming a parent both matured him and mellowed him out. 

And then he received the postcard from New York. He hardly ever got mail, other than bills, just the occasional card from Natasha just checking in but that was it. Steve never bothered to sign up for any magazine subscriptions or ordered anything online directly. If he needed to order anything from an online realtor, he used the pack’s joint accounts and would address it to Carol with his nickname in parentheses. It always made them laugh to find a packaged drop off addressed to Carol (Sunflower) Danvers. Everyone up at the general store knew to leave a note in Steve’s PO box when a package addressed like that came by. He’d been startled by the arrival of the postcard with a picture of a couple sitting on a bench in central park on the front. Startlement had quickly led to a moment of blind panic. The only other time a letter had shown up that wasn’t from Natasha it had been Margo’s first birthday gift from Clint, Thor, and Lok, with a written apology from Clint for chasing him out of Brooklyn. This postcard was a blaring neon sign declaring everything he’d lost twenty-three months ago when he decided to leave the Erskine pack. 

It took him a whole week to decide if he should even bother replying in the first place and then another couple of days to piece together what he wanted to say. When he finally thought he had perfected the correct tone, friendly without being overly friendly because he wasn't certain that he wanted to encourage a response. Steve sent it. Once he’s reply was gone in the mail Steve couldn’t help but puzzle over the mystery writer. That line about his features, _For as judgmental as your face looks, you’re actually not that critical of a person_ , only someone who had actually met Steve would’ve felt so comfortable declaring a statement like that. But for the life of him, Steve just couldn’t think who this person could be. Eventually, he put it out of his mind. He had more important things to focus on than a strange random correspondence that probably wouldn’t be repeated.

At least that’s what he thought until the next postcard came, again keeping with the New York theme.

**🌻~🌻~🐺~🌻~🌻**

> _Hello –  
>  Uhm, you seem to know me, but I’m not sure who you are pal. But more importantly, you seem to need someone to talk to and since the only person that I _know_ who has this PO box address and could have given it to you isn’t in the habit of handing out information to wackadoos, then I’m willing to listen. You’ll have to forgive me though if I’m not as forthcoming as you about personal details. I have my reasons for not wanting to be found and let’s just leave it at that.  
>  If I’m understanding you – you feel like there’s too much pressure to continue being someone who you no longer are and it's unfair of everyone to expect that of you, right? Gotta say, pal, sounds like you should probably just say something instead of just stewing in your resentment there. Seems to me like you have a lot of people around you who are concerned for you, wouldn’t they be better to talk to than a virtual stranger? Why not let them know how you feel? If they’re reasonable people, then they should understand. If they don’t understand your reservations about leading and assuming the role they’re trying to force upon you, well, then get yourself, new friends? Really, pal, what the hell do you want me to say here? You need to talk to somebody close to you who better knows what’s going on than word vomiting on a postcard for whoever reads it. Look, I’m running out of room here, otherwise, I’d continue to tell you how much of a numbskull I think you’re being about the whole damn thing. Hopefully, this is enough to get my point across._

**🌻~🌻~🐺~🌻~🌻**

_That's my daughter in the water  
Everything she knows, I taught her  
Everything she knows_  
_Everything I say  
She takes to heart  
Everything she takes  
She takes apart_

At least that’s what he thought until the next postcard came, again keeping with the New York theme. Steve again found himself debating if he should reply or not and eventually deciding to go for it, picking up a postcard towards the end of his shift at the general store. The picture of a dock at sunset and a pair of Adirondack chairs with the words _“Better than Therapy”_ across the top just spoke to him and remembering the contests of that first postcard (hidden in his sock drawer at home) he thought it would be fitting. Steve wrote about inconsequential things in response to this new note, right there behind the ice cream counter then sent it on its way. Once his reply was gone he found himself staring at the mystery writer's latest card. It was a picture of the Brooklyn bridge behind a row of brownstones with the skyline of Manhattan in the background, done up in shades of blue and orange. Feeling homesick and heartsore he finished clocking out for the day then leaving by the front door, the bells chiming welcomingly as he opened it, he jumped down the three front steps off the porch and headed off down the road past the Library towards the packhouse. During the day while he worked Margo was generally left in the care of either Carol or Maria, whoever wasn’t closing the little biker bar/restaurant they co-owned that night. 

Even before he’d entered the house Steve could hear the sound of music blaring - although to pure human ears it would’ve been a reasonable volume - and he slipped in through the deck door to walk into the open kitchen to discover both Carol and Maria holding Margo up between them dancing around the sunken living room to the sounds of _Saturday Sunl_. They were both singing along to the lyrics with Margo joining in for the _Ba-ba, ba-ba; Ba-ba, ba-b-ba-ba_. As he watched the mated pair dipped the little girl between them with perfect synchronization, then swirled around to face him. He clapped enthusiastically for their little display and Margo joined in.

“Da! Dance, da!” The toddler exclaimed.

“I can see that Miss Margo, you’re a very good dancer,” Steve told her. She giggled both pleased by his answer and how serious he was about it.

“We just might have a protege on our hands here,” Maria told him, running her hand along Margo's cheek and throat to scent her and leaning over to kiss her wife before moving to great Steve himself. She gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek before pulling back to ask, “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” he replied too quickly and immediately winced.

“Yeah, nice try sunflower, but you’re not your usual sunny self,” Carol called him out, coming over to greet him as well. She gave him a hug and a kiss on the opposite cheek making sure to lean into for a second or two longer and when she pulled away Margo had magically transferred herself from her Alpha’s arms into her father's. 

“Got another letter from your ghostwriter didn’t you?” Maria asked from somewhere behind him where she was putzing about the kitchen.

“What? No, I didn’t,” he denied.

“Steve, you left your mail on the counter.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, pretty slick there master spy.” Carol teased him with a wink, “Are you going to reply?”

“I sort of already did,” he admitted.

“I’m not so sure that’s the smart thing,” Maria cautioned coming around to put Margo’s diaper bag on his shoulder for him.

“It might not be smart but it’s certainly an adventure,” was Carol’s comment on the matter. “I guess the best thing to do is keep up this little exchange for as long as you’re comfortable with it, you can always ghost the ghostwriter if you need to.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

“In the meantime, would you like to hear the new word our little miss learned today thanks to Grammie M?”

“Carol, don’t you dare put the blame on me for that! She absolutely heard it from you,” Maria scolded her mate much to Carol’s and Margo’s delight.

**🌻~🌻~🐺~🌻~🌻**

Bucky found it hard to believe that this little exchange of theirs had been going on for nearly five years. They weren’t sending postcards every week; it was more like one every couple of months or so, but steady correspondence nonetheless. He was surprised by how much of himself Steve was willing to share writing with a virtual stranger - although Steve had taken to just calling him pal in his writing, short for penpal, the kid had jokes, who knew? - but Bucky was even more surprised by how much he was willing to share in return. 

Over the years, Bucky likes to think that they’d gotten to know each other fairly well, but nothing could’ve prepared him for what he read that day. He had assumed, wrongly, that they didn’t really have any secrets between them other than their identities and even then it was a secret to Bucky, he was fully aware of who it was he’d been writing to these last five years. But evidently, Steve had just one more to share with him, and it was a whopper. In his closing paragraph the omega wrote;

> _I hope you like the postcard, I let my daughter pick this one out and she’s going through an otter phase at the moment. Everything’s otter, even the cat I let her godfather talk me into getting for her as an early 6th birthday present. She’s a grey tabby that the kiddo proudly named “Potter my Otter” or Otter if you’re feeling informal. It's a rather strange cat. She likes to nap with the kiddo during the day as they both watch an episode or two of Forensic Files on Netflix. Some days I swear that cat is taking everything in, and if I ever end up murdered either Otter did it, or she’ll solve it._  
>  _Oh well, hopefully, the cat won’t murder me before you have a chance to visit pal._

The word ‘daughter’ captured Bucky’s attention and he barely took in the rest of the paragraph. He couldn’t let it go and the thought ran through his head like a spreading locomotive _Steve has a daughter_. A thought that was closely followed by the crushing realization that he had truly lost him and Bucky felt the unmistakable pitfall of his stomach dropping a thousand feet at bone-crushing speed; a drop he’d never wanted to feel again, not after surviving his fall in the Alps. He took the postcard and it’s a cute little otter and ran up the stairs to Clint and Natasha’s apartment.

Crashing through the door without so much as a hello, Bucky demanded; “Were you just going to let me find out for myself that Steve has a kid, or was somebody going to tell me?”

He’d caught the two cuddling on the couch, possibly even startled them out of a nap Nat had been doing that a lot lately since announcing her own pregnancy and earned himself twin glares for his effort. “Oh c’mon don’t look at me like that, were you really going to leave me in the dark on this?!? Stevie’s gone and gotten himself mated with a kid and neither one of you thought I should know before I went making a fool of myself sending love letters to him?”  
Over the intervening years, both Bucky and Clint had learned to appreciate each other and actually developed a close-knit friendship - it helped once Bucky made it clear that he had no interest in being the Alpha of his own pack, ever and made it clear to Clint that he didn’t want to take over the Erskine pack while telling Tony that he could take on the headache of what was left of S.H.I.E.L.D. According to Natasha, they’d developed quite the bromance and it was almost too cute to stomach. Their relationship also improved once Bucky stopped sleeping around with any and all individuals who had even a passing resemblance to Steve he could find. Although credit to that went to Loki - when he decided to threaten someone the Emissary didn’t do half measures. Actually, a lot had improved for Bucky once he admitted to himself what even his wolf had known all those years ago during what he had wrongly thought would be a one night stand; Steve was his mate and there was no running away from the fact.

“Seriously, both of you, stop staring at me like I’m an idiot and start explaining to me why you thought it was a good idea to keep this from.”

“Hey Bucky, take a minute and think about things will you.” That was all Clint had to say in his defense for keeping Bucky in the dark.

“I have been thinking about things -”

“She’s your daughter, James. Sorry, Clint I know we agreed we’d let him figure it out for himself but I just don’t have the patience for it, honestly.”

“She’s _what?!?_ ”

“Can you table the freak out for a second,” Natasha pushed forward, “the more important thing is what are you going to do about the fact that you have a daughter?”

“Oh god, I have a daughter.”

_That's my daughter in the water  
Who'd have ever thought her?  
Who'd have ever thought?_

**🌻~🌻~🐺~🌻~🌻**

_Ah, home, let me come home  
Home is wherever I’m with you  
Ah, home, let me come home  
Home is where I’m alone with you_

Steve sat in the dock chair, feet buried in the sand, his favorite postcard and it’s accompanying letter unfolded in his lap, daydreaming about the person who wrote him so faithfully. The other’s liked to tease him about his pen pal and how excited he would get over the prospect of a new correspondence waiting for him in his post office box down at the general store. Sam was especially bad about it, but then again, Sam was just the _worst_ , period. He liked to call Steve a lovesick fool. Accused him of making cow eyes at the postman when Rocket didn’t empty the bag fast enough for Steve. He adamantly protested that he did no such thing, but that was mostly for show. Steve knew that he absolutely did do exactly that and at least Rocket was a good sport about it as long as Steve was a good sport about being teased.

The game of his secret admirer was fun for the first few years but then he wanted to know for certain if the person writing him was who he suspected. Thankfully he had Natasha in his back pocket and she readily confirmed his suspicions. Therefore when the latest postcard came and there were hints in it about possibly meeting in person, Steve decided to finally let go of his last secret and then make an obvious invitation. Now all he could do was wait and see if the alpha would take him up on it.

When he last checked the mail the dependable letter he had been expecting wasn’t there and Sam had wondered if they needed a romcom night with Riley and Margo at Ma’s for Steve to get over the heartbreak of not hearing from his penpal. Steve had laughed the suggestion off hoping that the lack of written reply meant he’d soon be getting an answer in person.

“Da!” A small voice called for him, reaching his ears and giving him enough warning to safely tuck the items in his lap away before a soaked little body launched itself into his lap.

“Umphf, Margo-mine I think you’re getting a little big for treating me like a human trampoline,” he gently reminded his daughter, taking the towel off the arm of the chair and wrapping it around her shoulders, then tucking her in under his chin.

“Never da, never. I’m always gonna be your little girl.”

“Well, that’s true,” he replied solemnly before leaning in and blowing a raspberry on her cheek.

“ _Eww!_ Da! That’s gross,” she yelled through her giggles wriggling around to try and ‘escape’ but not actually meaning it.

“C’mon, my little mermaid, swim time is over and all good fishies need to hop to it and brush their teeth then comb their hair before storytime.”

“Ugh, storytime just means it’s almost bedtime.” She sighed dramatically trying to flop backwards in Steve’s hold.

“You’re too smart.” He told her, standing up with her still in his arms and turning around to head up the short sandy path to their cabin. Steve happened to look up at their porch and paused in his steps, momentarily shocked by what he saw.

There leaning over the railing of the porch staring down at them was Bucky. Sam was next to him. When Sam saw that Steve had spotted them he leaned over to say something to Bucky then patted him firmly on the shoulder and with a wave to both Steve and Margo turned to leave. Taking that for the signal that it was, Steve started back up the path, hitching Margo up his arms and getting a secure hold on her.

“Da, who is that?” She whispered, in that child's way of whispering where it really wasn’t a whisper at all.

“That, Margo, is your Poppa,” Steve answered her steadily, holding eye contact with Bucky, daring him to contradict him.

“Poppa,” she repeated quietly to herself. She then looked up at Bucky and clenched her jaw stubbornly in a way that was all too familiar to Steve. He’d seen it a lot over the last few years, of all the things she could’ve gotten from him, Margo had to go and develop his sense of justice and need to do what was right. It was in moments like this that he remembered his ma sayin’ that she wished he’d be lucky enough to have kids just like him someday.

“Uh nuh, none of that now miss,” he cautioned his daughter, walking up the steps to the porch and around Bucky. Bucky, who simply turned around so he could continue to watch them. Steve set Margo down on her feet by the door leading into the living room. “Go change out of that wet bathing suit and into your jammies. I want to see you brushing your teeth by the time I get in there.”

“Okay da,” she agreed reluctantly and stomped her way inside. Steve slides the sliding door mostly close behind her, leaving it open just enough so he could clearly hear what she was getting up to, then turned to face his visitor.

“So that’s,” Bucky started then stopped, still staring after where Margo had disappeared into the house. After a moment he turned his full attention on Steve and squared his shoulders, “You don’t seem so surprised to see me.”

“I’m not,” Steve answered honestly. “I might be blond Buck, but I’ve never been stupid. Besides, I’ve got Nat for a sister to confirm any and all suspicions I might have.”

“You’ve stayed in touch with Nat?”

“Do you honestly think I would’ve been allowed to leave if she didn’t know where I was going in the first place?”

“But what she and Clint did?”

“It was a dirty trick, but we’re the ones who decided to sleep together.”

Bucky seemed lost about that for a minute and then he started to laugh. Steve let him for a minute, he had a feeling that it was a long time coming.

“And here I thought I was the one holding all the cards,” the alpha finally weazed out wiping at his eyes. 

“Well, that’s your first mistake right there,” Steve told him, smiling to show that he was kidding.

“Can I meet her?” Bucky asked, sounding endearingly eager.

“Yeah, sure Buck.”

_Ah, home, let me come home  
Home is wherever I’m with you  
Ah, home, let me come home  
Home is where I’m alone with you_

[](https://imgur.com/8wbAf67)


End file.
